THE 
MUSE 


EXILE 


WILLIAM 
WATSON 


UC-NRLF 


B    3    315    3D7 


THE 

MUSE 

IN 

EXILE 


THE 
MUSE  IN  EXILE 

POEMS  BY 
WILLIAM 
WATSON 

TO    WHICH    IS    ADDED    AN    ADDRESS    ON 

THE  POET'S  PLACE  IN 
THE  SCHEME  OF  LIFE 


HERBERT  JENKINS  LIMITED 
ARUNDEL  PLACE  HAYMARKET 
LONDON  S.W.     fig    £3     MCMXIII 


WILLIAM    BRENDON    AND   SON,    LTD.,    PRINTERS,    PLYMOUTH 


TO 

ROBERT    UNDERWOOD    JOHNSON 

OF   NEW  YORK 

In  your  swift  city,  where  all  things 

Hasten  on  such  impetuous  wings, 

Nought  have  I  known  to  fly  more  fast 

Than  hours  that  'neath  your  roof  were  passed. 

To  you  these  pages !  and  may  they 

Hurry  not  utterly  away. 

W.  W. 


£  d  Q 1  O  n 


i  ^ 


PREFACE 

THE  greater  number  of  the  poems  and 
verses  in  this  volume  now  make  their 
first  appearance  ;  others  are  recovered 
from  the  pages  of  the  Times,  the  Daily 
News,  the  Daily  Chronicle,  the  Nation,  the  Spectator, 
the  New  York  Times,  the  Irish  Times,  the  Comhill 
Magazine,  and  the  Quest ;  and  I  am  indebted  to 
the  editors  of  these  journals  and  periodicals  for 
liberty  to  reprint  my  contributions.  The  "  Hymn 
for  a  Progressive  People  "  has  appeared,  without 
that  title,  in  the  new  hymnals  of  the  Unitarian  and 
Congregational  churches  in  America,  but  has  not 
hitherto  been  published  in  England. 

Concerning  one  short  poem — the  lines  entitled 
"  Science  and  Nature  "— I  wish  here  to  say  a  few 
words.  On  its  appearance  in  a  newspaper  this 
little  piece  evoked  rejoinders,  couched  in  vivacious 
verse,  from  two  writers  perhaps  more  truly  dis- 
tinguished by  their  prose — Mr.  Eden  Phillpotts 
and  Mr.  Chiozza  Money.     Neither  of  these  gentle- 


8  PREFACE 

nicd  resorted  to  any  unfairer  weapon  than  the 
retort  courteous,  but  both  of  them  seemed  to 
suppose  that  the  object  of  their  very  urbane  attack 
was  a  person  either  uninterested  in  science,  or 
hostile  to  it  ;  and  I  had  fondly  imagined  that  there 
was  quite  enough  in  the  fourteen  or  fifteen  volumes, 
with  which  I  have  helped  to  encumber  the  shelves 
of  the  British  Museum  and  the  Bodleian,  to  make 
such  a  supposition  impossible.  It  so  happens  that 
I  was  almost  cradled  in  ideas  of  Evolution,  and 
grew  up  in  an  atmosphere  where  "  natural  selec- 
tion "  and  "  the  survival  of  the  fittest "  were 
household  words.  My  earliest  companion  in  country 
walks — my  father — was  a  man  whose  very  en- 
franchised mind  had  a  natural  impulse  towards 
scientific  speculation  on  its  largest  lines,  and  he 
did  not  long  leave  me  unimbued  with  his  own 
tendencies.  One  of  the  last  letters  written  by 
Darwin — a  letter  making  beautifully  courteous 
acknowledgment  of  the  utility  of  a  trifling  sugges- 
tion sent  to  him — was  written  to  me,  then  a  very 
young  man,  the  author  of  a  single  unnoticed  book. 
It  was  written  on  April  18,  1882,  the  day  before 
he  died,  and  was  published  by  me  soon  afterwards 
in  the  Academy,  where  it  can  be  found  by  the 
curious.    I  have  been  told  on  good  authority  that 


PREFACE  9 

the  friendly  interest  which  Herbert  Spencer  is 
known  to  have  taken  in  my  writings  was  partly 
due  to  his  perceiving  with  pleasure  that  their 
author  was  in  touch  with  the  modern  spirit,  which 
to  him  meant  the  scientific  spirit.  Passing  from 
these  personal  reminiscences  I  return  to  what 
occasioned  them — the  lines  entitled  "  Science  and 
Nature."  These  verses  of  mine  had  especial  refer- 
ence to  "  aviation,"  and  I  still  think,  as  I  thought 
when  I  wrote  them,  that  to  do  imperfectly  and 
with  difficulty  what  any  seabird  can  do  with 
divinely  beautiful  ease,  and  then  to  call  this  awk- 
ward imitation  the  "  conquest  of  the  air,"  is  to 
court  criticism  and  to  use  vainglorious  language. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  whilst  I  watch  all  the  really 
great  achievements  of  the  scientific  intelligence 
with  as  fascinated  a  gaze  as  in  early  youth,  I 
cannot  but  think  that  there  is  as  good  reason  now 
as  there  was  then  for  some  protest  against  what 
used  to  be  called,  not  entirely  without  justification, 
the  arrogance  of  science.  When  one  considers,  for 
instance,  that  the  operations  of  electrical  energy 
have  been,  as  one  may  say,  flashed  and  brandished 
before  Man's  eyes  ever  since  he  was  Man,  the  fact 
that  he  has  very  recently  come  to  know  anything 
about    them    should    rather    be    an    occasion    for 


io  PREFACE 

humility  than  for  pride.  When  one  remembers  at 
how  late  a  period  in  the  history  of  knowledge  was 
discovered  either  the  circulation  of  our  own  dwelling- 
place  around  the  sun,  or  the  circulation  of  the  blood 
in  our  own  bodies  ;  when,  looking  at  the  progress 
of  applied  science,  we  consider  how  long  Nature 
had  been  vainly  thrusting  upon  our  attention  the 
unused  capabilities  of  steam  as  a  motive  power  ; 
one  may,  perhaps,  be  pardoned  for  asking  of  the 
scientific  intellect  some  moderation  in  the  homage 
it  pays  to  its  own  subtlety.  A  hundred  other 
instances  might  be  cited  to  the  same  effect,  but 
perhaps  the  point  hardly  needs  to  be  laboured. 

Together  with  the  verse-contents  of  this  volume 
I  have  included  a  lecture  given  last  winter  before 
various  audiences  in  America.  Prepared  with 
enforced  haste,  on  shipboard,  it  has  defects  of 
which  I  am  extremely  sensible,  and  no  doubt  it 
has  many  others  besides  ;  but  when  I  sat  down  to 
revise  and  generally  castigate  it  into  some  sort  of 
fitness  for  its  present  form  of  publication  I  found 
that  it  would  speedily  become,  under  that  process, 
a  palimpsest  in  which  the  old  matter  would  tend 
to  disappear  altogether  under  the  new ;  so  I 
decided  to  let  it  go  forth  untouched,  with  all  its 
blemishes,    more   especially    as   it    does    say   with 


PREFACE  ii 

sincerity,  if  also  with  the  disjointedness  which  is 
perhaps    permissible    in    an    oral    address,    some 
things   of   which   I   wished   to   deliver   my   mind. 
Certain  very  good-natured  critics  in  America  inter- 
preted part  of  it  as  a  lament  for  the  insufficient 
praise  bestowed  upon  living  poets,  and  took  me 
gently  to  task  on  that  score  ;  but  what  I  had  rather 
meant  to  convey  was  a  feeling  of  dissatisfaction  at 
the  paucity  of  real  discussion,  whether  it  involve 
praise    or    blame :     direct    discussion    of    concrete 
qualities  in  a  poet's  work.    Twenty  or  thirty  years 
ago  we  were  threatened  with  a  surfeit  of  a  kind  of 
criticism  which  made  rather  exaggerated  claims  to 
be  synthetic,  and  which  took  the  form  of  ponderous 
essays  with  some  such  titles  as  "  Keats  and  the 
French    Revolution,' '    or   "  Shelley   and   the    Pre- 
cession of  the  Equinoxes."    This  kind  of  criticism 
has  latterly  abated,  and  though  I  do  not  much 
bewail  the   fact   I   could  wish  that   the  so-called 
"  synthesis  "  had  been  replaced  by  rather  more  of 
definite  analysis  than  I  can  see  in  the  criticism  of 
the  present  day.    For  a  quarter  of  a  century  before 
the  death  of  Swinburne  it  became  the  custom  to 
place  that  poet  on  an  elevation  where  critical  tests 
and  standards  were  simply  suspended  altogether. 
It  is  these  tests  and  standards  that  I  wish  to  see 


12  PREFACE 

more  rigorously  enforced,  and  applied  to  the  living 
and  the  dead  alike.  I  ask  for  more  discussion  of 
the  actual  ways  and  means  by  which  a  poet  com- 
passes, or  fails  to  compass,  his  specifically  poetic 
ends  ;  more  examination  of  his  art  and  science  as  a 
poet. 

To  illustrate  what  appears  to  me  the  regrettable 
dearth  of  such  discussion  and  examination,  I  will 
risk  being  thought  a  prattling  egotist,  and  will  tell  a 
little  story  drawn  from  my  own  experience.  A 
few  years  ago  I  resolved  to  deepen  somewhat  my 
too  superficial  knowledge  of  old  English  history  by 
going  to  the  original  sources  from  which  our  modern 
historians  derive  their  material.  Accordingly,  I 
spent  no  inconsiderable  time  in  reading  very 
thoroughly  the  old  chroniclers  of  this  island's 
fortunes,  from  Gildas  and  Bede  and  Nennius  down 
to  Florence  of  Worcester  and  other  twelfth-century 
annalists,  and  I  was  greatly  struck  by  the  un- 
expected frequency  with  which  superbly  picturesque 
phrases  leap  from  their  rust-eaten  pens.  Where, 
I  asked  myself,  in  Freeman  or  Green,  could  one 
meet  with  diction  so  vivid  as  in  the  passage  where 
one  of  these  ancients,  describing  the  mustering  of 
an  army,  speaks  of  the  rustle  of  their  breastplates  ? 
Where  could  one  find  a  modern  counterpart  to  the 


PREFACE  13 

phraseology  of  another  old  chronicler  who  pictures 
a  military  conqueror  as  filling  his  wheel-tracks  with 
blood  ?  I,  therefore,  tried  an  experiment.  Writing 
a  poem,  which  I  afterwards  published — first  with 
the  title  of  The  King  Without  Peer,  subsequently  as 
King  Alfred — I  introduced  into  its  opening  lines  a 
striking  expression  directly  borrowed  from  a 
sentence  of  Asser's  in  which  he  speaks  of  Alfred's 
physical  infirmities :  Erat  itaque  rex  Me  multis 
tribulationum  clavis  confossus.  And  reproducing 
the  latter  part  of  this  sentence  almost  literally 
as  "  pierced  with  many  nails  of  pain  " — a  haunting 
phrase  which  perhaps  the  author  of  the  Book  of 
Job  would  not  have  disdained — I  then,  throughout 
the  rest  of  my  poem,  imported  bodily  many  other 
powerful  phrases  from  the  archaic  poems  quoted 
in  the  Saxon  Chronicle ;  from  that  Chronicle  itself ; 
from  William  of  Malmesbury  and  Henry  of  Hunting- 
don ;  from  that  glorious  romanticist,  Geoffrey  of 
Monmouth,  and  from  kindred  sources ;  weaving 
these  phrases  into  my  verse  with  such  poor  skill  as 
I  could  command.  One  of  them  was  possibly  the 
original  of  a  more  famous  but  not  finer  phrase  of 
Milton's.  And  as  these  jewels  were  not  of  my  own 
fashioning,  I  feel  free  to  say  that  they  were  mag- 
nificent ;   but  I  suppose  they  were  taken  to  be  my 


i4  PREFACE 

own,  and,  at  any  rate,  they  passed  without  a  word 
of  comment,  so  far  as  I  know,  save  in  one  provincial 
newspaper.  I  narrate  my  little  experiment  and  its 
result,  because  I  think  the  matter  gives  some  point 
to  my  complaint  that  criticism  is  falling  into  a 
habit  of  passing  neglectfully  over  what  I  will  call 
the  literary  aspects  of  literature — surely  not  its 
least  interesting  aspects.  I  have,  however,  touched 
here  the  outskirts  of  a  large  subject  to  which  I  hope 
to  return  before  this  young  year  grows  old. 

W.  W. 


THE     POET'S    PLACE    IN 
THE    SCHEME    OF    LIFE 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  IN  VARIOUS  PARTS 
OF    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 

IN  the  latter  part  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria, 
at  Ambleside,  in  the  County  of  Westmorland, 
and  the  country  of  Wordsworth,  a  coach- 
driver  was  taking  a  party  of  excursionists 
through  one  of  the  most  charming  pieces  of  scenery 
in  that  heavenly  neighbourhood.  He  was  taking 
them  along  Loughrigg  Drive,  and  on  passing  the 
house  associated  with  that  eminent  historian,  Dr. 
Arnold  of  Rugby,  he  pointed  it  out  to  his  passengers 
with  this  illuminating  remark :  "  That  was  the 
residence  of  the  late  Dr.  Arnold — Dr.  Matthew 
Arnold,  the  Queen's  head  physician."  Now  that 
coachman  was,  as  I  happen  to  know,  a  most  ex- 
cellent man,  a  man  whom  the  contemporaries  of 
Shakespeare  would,  I  suppose,  have  called  "  ex- 
cellent in  the  quality  he  professes."  His  manner  of 
driving   combined   an    appearance   of   recklessness 


•i6  TtiE    POET'S    PLACE 

with  an  actually-  high  degree  of  circumspection  in 
a  way  which  gave  his  passengers  at  once  an  ex- 
hilarating sense  of  adventure  and  a  comforting 
assurance  of  security.  But  I  must  qualify  this 
tribute  to  his  genius  for  "  the  manage  of  horses  " 
in  general,  by  the  admission  that  he  had  little 
familiarity  with  the  special  points  of  that  rather 
restive  steed,  Pegasus.  In  other  words,  he  was,  I  am 
afraid,  typical  of  those  innumerable  persons,  in  whose 
scheme  of  life  the  poet  cannot  properly  be  said  to 
have  a  place  at  all.  I  say  those  innumerable  persons, 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  my  own  country  they 
form  a  majority  so  overwhelming  that  the  minority 
sinks  into  an  almost  negligible,  almost  invisible 
fraction  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  In  America,  I 
have  reason  to  think  that  the  case  is  different.  The 
number  of  persons  in  this  country  who  take  an 
interest  in  poets, — it  may  not  always  be  an  effusively 
benevolent  interest, — is  manifestly  far  larger  in  pro- 
portion to  the  entire  population  than  in  the  country 
of  Chaucer  and  Milton.  But  even  here  I  suspect 
that  an  increasingly  substantial  body  of  persons 
are  acquiescing  in  a  scheme  of  life  which  excludes 
poetry  altogether — a  scheme  of  life  in  which  the 
poet  has  no  place  at  all.  This  is  a  state  of  things 
obviously  unfortunate  for  the  poet,  and  I  for  one 


IN   THE   SCHEME   OF   LIFE  17 

hold  the  opinion  that  it  is  not  altogether  good  for 
his  fellow-men.  You  are,  of  course,  at  liberty  to 
form  your  own  judgment  as  to  the  disinterested- 
ness of  this  opinion,  but  you  will  hardly  deny  that 
the  state  of  things  I  have  spoken  of  is  really  a 
phenomenon  of  our  times,  and,  as  such,  deserves 
attention  and  study.  What  is  the  true  explanation 
of  it? 

We  live,  one  man  will  tell  us,  in  a  busy  age,  and 
the  world  has  simply  no  time  for  poetry,  no  leisure 
for  the  muse.  Another  will  assure  us  that  poetry 
is  bound  to  recede  and  dwindle  before  her  great 
competitor  and  supplanter,  science.  The  external 
and  physical  world  is  declared  to  be  more  mar- 
vellous than  any  inner  world  of  the  mind,  and 
imagination  must  be  relegated  to  a  comparatively 
humble  place  as  a  vassal  kingdom  under  the 
suzerainty  of  knowledge.  To  both  of  these  con- 
tentions I  vehemently  demur. 

In  the  first  place  I  have  a  strong  suspicion  that 
what  is  called  the  speed  and  rush  of  modern  life  as 
compared  with  the  supposed  tranquillity  and  de- 
liberateness  of  the  past  is  largely  an  illusion,  and 
at  any  rate  the  slowness  and  tedium  of  our  age  is 
clearly  what  most  often  oppresses  the  ordinary  man. 
The  motor-car  and  the  aeroplane  are  typical  of  a 

B 


18  THE   POET'S   PLACE 

hundred  ways  by  which  he  desperately  seeks  to 
escape  from  the  monotony,  the  slowness,  of  a  life 
empty  of  action  and  incident ;  a  life  in  which  nothing 
occurs  ;  a  life  made  so  smooth  and  orderly  by  the 
operation  of  law  and  custom — a  life  so  regulated 
and  policed — that  none  of  the  primal  passions  have 
free  play  in  it,  that  the  elements  of  sudden  danger 
and  thrilling  hazard  are  almost  banished  from  it, 
and  the  exercise  of  some  of  the  more  heroic  virtues 
almost  precluded.  One  might  have  thought  that 
a  life  so  shorn  of  its  more  glowing  colours,  its  more 
violent  situations,  would  provide  precisely  the 
antecedent  conditions  necessary  for  the  appreciation 
of  an  art  whose  function  is  to  see  the  world  through 
a  kind  of  ecstasy ;  to  heighten  and  emphasize  its 
lineaments,  though  without  distorting  them ;  to 
see  vividly,  to  paint  nobly,  and  to  feel  romantically, 
whatever  in  this  universe  is  to  be  seen  and  felt  and 
painted.  Yet  the  truth  must  be  confessed  that  the 
art  whose  functions  I  venture  thus  to  describe — 
the  art  of  poetry — is,  more  than  all  others,  the  art 
which  of  late  has  appealed  with  constantly  diminish- 
ing force  to  the  audience  which  it  addresses. 

In  the  second  place, — coming  to  the  statement, 
so  often  made,  that  poetry  is  being  ousted  by 
science,  let  me  say  at  once  that  between  poetry 


IN   THE   SCHEME   OF   LIFE  19 

and  science  I  can  perceive  no  antagonism  what- 
ever. I  do  not  believe  it  possible  for  any  true 
poetic  greatness  to  coexist  with  an  attitude  of 
hostility  towards  the  advancement  of  knowledge. 
If  I  heard  of  a  poet  who,  whether  under  theological 
or  other  influences,  cut  himself  off  from  the  great 
avenues  of  enlightenment, — who,  for  instance, 
allowed  himself  to  live  in  ignorance  of  the  results 
of  modern  biological  research  as  they  affect  the 
supremely  interesting  question  of  man's  origin 
on  this  planet, — I  should  say — "  this  is  a  poet 
insufficiently  interested  in  man  and  in  life  "  ;  and 
I  do  not  believe  that  such  a  poet  could  have  any- 
thing really  pertinent  to  say  to  his  generation. 
The  poet  who  is  really  a  poet,  however  deeply  he 
may  strike  root  in  the  past,  emphatically  lives  and 
moves  and  has  his  being  in  the  present.  There  is 
nothing  of  the  mustiness  of  antiquity  about  him. 
And  the  necessity  for  him  is  never  so  great  as  in  an 
age  exceptionally  fruitful  of  scientific  discovery. 
For  the  more  we  know  of  the  plan  and  workings 
of  this  cosmos,  especially  in  its  astronomical  re- 
lations, the  more  does  it  wear  the  appearance 
of  a  scrupulously  and  soullessly  accurate  machine  ; 
the  more  does  it  seem  a  merely  ingenious  con- 
trivance, a  magnification,  on  an  infinite  scale,  of  a 


20  THE    POET'S    PLACE 

design  not  inconceivably  beyond  the  powers  of 
some  prodigious  human  engineer  ;  the  more  does  it 
seem  a  piece  of  illimitable,  fantastic  clockwork, 
rather  terrifying  in  its  adamantine  regularity  ;  and 
the  greater  becomes  our  need  of  that  particular  order 
of  mind  which  never  quite  loses  its  consciousness 
of  the  soul  behind  the  apparently  mechanical 
springs  ;  which  cares  about  the  springs,  mainly  in 
so  far  as  they  seem  to  give  evidence  of  a  soul ; 
and  which  translates  into  rhythm  and  melody  the 
iron  routine  of  the  universe. 

Yet  I  am  bound  to  admit  that  this  need  for  the 
poet  is  felt  by  but  few  persons  in  our  day.  With 
one  exception  there  is  not  a  living  English  poet, 
the  sales  of  whose  poems  would  not  have  been 
thought  contemptible  by  Scott  and  Byron.  The 
exception  is,  of  course,  that  apostle  of  British  im- 
perialism— that  vehement  and  voluble  glorifier  of 
Britannic  ideals,  whom  I  dare  say  you  will  readily 
identify  from  my  brief,  and,  I  hope,  not  disparaging 
description  of  him.  With  that  one  brilliant  and 
salient  exception,  England's  living  singers  succeed 
in  reaching  only  a  pitifully  small  audience.  The 
fault,  many  persons  hold,  is  in  the  poets  themselves. 
For  my  part,  I  will  not  say  that  I  share  that  view. 
Neither  will  I  say  that  I  totally  dissent  from  it. 


IN   THE    SCHEME   OF   LIFE  21 

But  I  will  say  this — the  indifference  of  the  reading 
public  to  contemporary  poetry  is,  in  my  belief, 
largely  due  to  the  vagaries  and  perversities  of  a  kind 
of  critic  who  is  not  so  much  an  expositor  and  in- 
terpreter of  literature  as  a  rather  officious  inter- 
loper between  writers  and  readers.  Lest,  however, 
I  should  be  misunderstood,  and  should  be  wrongly 
supposed  to  depreciate,  not  only  the  noble  science 
of  criticism  itself,  but  that  company  of  select  minds 
by  whom  its  best  traditions  are  honourably  upheld 
in  our  own  day,  let  me  hasten  to  explain  my  meaning 
with  some  approach  to  fullness. 

We  have  amongst  us  the  critic  with  a  bee  in  his 
bonnet ;  the  critic  who  finds  that  it  pays  him  to 
have  a  bee  in  his  bonnet,  since  brilliantly  unsound 
criticism  is  often  more  readable  than  criticism  which 
is  unbrilliantly  sound  ;  the  critic  who  makes  little 
attempt  to  arrive  at  fundamental  laws  of  taste  and 
of  art,  but  who  has  infinite  confidence  in  his  own 
crotchets,  who  gives  a  loose  rein  to  his  idiosyncrasy, 
or,  shall  I  say,  erects  his  idiosyncrasy  into  a  standard 
or  criterion  ;  the  critic  who  happens  to  have  a 
temperamental  preference  for  a  certain  kind  or 
order  of  excellence,  perhaps  not  the  highest  kind 
or  order,  and  who  judges  everything  that  comes 
before  him  with  sole  reference  to  the  degree  in 


22  THE   POET'S   PLACE 

which  it  satisfies  that  particular  idiosyncratic  test 
of  his.  Then  there  is  the  critic  who  sets  an  inordinate 
value  on  a  certain  kind  of  simplicity, — a  simplicity 
often  as  self-conscious  and  deliberate  as  the  most 
highly  elaborated  ornateness ;  in  fact,  a  simplicity 
which  is  one  of  the  most  artificial  products  of 
extreme  literary  sophistication.  This  kind  of 
critic  is  offended  by  any  richness  or  splendour  of 
attire  in  which  the  poet  has— perhaps  appro- 
priately— clothed  his  thought.  We  have,  too,  the 
critic  who  at  every  opportunity,  in  or  out  of 
season,  pits  one  great  writer  against  another, 
instead  of  appreciating  the  individuality  of  both ; 
who  plays  off  Wordsworth  against  Shelley,  or 
Shelley  against  Wordsworth,  instead  of  recog- 
nizing that  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth  is  a  food, 
while  the  poetry  of  Shelley  is  a  stimulant — that 
food  is  a  more  essential  and  indispensable  thing 
than  stimulants,  while  nevertheless  stimulants, 
though  not  things  one  can  live  upon,  have  at  times 
their  value,  and,  in  short,  that  the  poet  who  feeds 
and  nourishes  us,  and  the  poet  who  fires  and 
quickens  us,  are  alike  performing,  each  in  his  own 
way,  a  noble  service.  There  is  likewise  the  critic 
— and  he  has  been  very  much  to  the  fore  of 
late— who  frankly  dislikes  and  resents  sound  and 


IN   THE   SCHEME   OF   LIFE  23 

solid  workmanship ;  who  thinks  it  one  of  the 
signs  of  genius  to  be  careless  of  finish  and  scornful 
of  technique  ;  who  fails  to  comprehend  that  real 
inspiration  can  work  hand  in  hand  with  careful 
craftsmanship,  not  extinguished  or  hampered  by 
it,  but  informing  and  ennobling  what  would  other- 
wise be  scarcely  better  than  dull  mechanic  toil.  And 
finally  there  is  the  critic  who  is  eternally  demanding 
that  poetry  should  be  progressive,  and  to  whom 
progress  means  a  kicking  against  tradition  and 
a  violent  breach  with  the  past.  He  does  not 
recognize  that  there  are  limits  beyond  which  the 
only  possible  progress  is  a  descent  into  mere 
eccentricity  and  formlessness.  Some  critics  when 
they  speak  of  progress  really  mean  decomposition. 
In  art,  as  in  nature,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  ripe- 
ness, and  we  all  know  what  is  the  stage  that 
succeeds  to  it. 

Now  I  maintain  that  the  total  effect  produced 
upon  the  "  reading  public  "  by  this  orgy  of  critical 
individualism  is  a  distracting  and  bewildering  one, 
and  that  it  makes  seriously  against  the  appreciation 
of  what  is  good  in  contemporary  poetry.  People 
read,  let  us  say,  in  their  favourite  newspaper,  a 
highly  laudatory  review  of  some  work  really  pro- 
duced in  response  to  a  purely  factitious  demand 


24  THE   POET'S    PLACE 

created  by  a  literary  "  group,"  by  a  critical 
cabal,  whose  habit  it  is  to  set  an  exaggerated 
value  on  certain  literary  qualities.  The  "  public  " 
buy  some  copies  of  this  work,  find  in  it  no  refresh- 
ment for  their  soul,  nothing  but  what  is  odd  or 
quaint  or  deliberately  singular  and  freakish,  and 
they  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  latter-day 
poet  is  a  being  who  dwells  apart  from  life  as  to 
all  its  larger  manifestations,  a  person  uninterested 
in  politics,  in  science,  in  sociology,  in  the  progress 
of  the  human  species ;  a  dreamy,  ineffectual, 
and  generally  neurotic  creature,  concerned  chiefly 
with  the  manufacture  of  strange  epitaphs  and  the 
analysis  of  his  own  equally  strange  and  not  very 
important  emotions.  Is  it  surprising  if  they  imagine 
that  contemporary  poetry  has  nothing  to  give  them 
which  can  in  an}^  way  illustrate  or  clarify  life — 
nothing  which  in  any  way  says  to  them  an  intimate 
and  helpful  word  ? 

For  amid  many  doubtful  and  arguable  matters, 
one  thing  is  certain  :  the  majority  of  cultivated 
men  and  women  do  not  set  any  exaggerated  value 
upon  these  subtle  and  singular  odours  and  flavours 
in  literary  art  which  your  professional  critic  is  so 
sedulously  in  search  of.  Your  professional  critic 
is   often   like   a   medical   specialist,    who   is   more 


IN   THE   SCHEME   OF    LIFE  25 

keenly  interested  in  a  remarkable  and  abnormal 
case  than  in  the  wider  aspects  of  pathology  or 
therapeutics.  The  typical  intelligent  reader  does 
not  share  this  purely  professional  curiosity  ;  he  is 
not  so  tired  of  the  great  writers  of  the  past  as  to 
resent  any  natural  and  inherited  resemblance  to 
them  in  their  successors.  Rather  is  he  pleased 
to  see  the  ancient  ancestral  lineaments  reappear, 
and  to  think  that  the  noble  tradition  in  which  he 
was  nurtured  is  being  nobly  perpetuated. 

Indeed  I  am  more  and  more  convinced  that 
there  exists  a  large  though  scattered  body  of 
cultivated,  intelligent,  serious,  but  silent  lovers  of 
fine  literature,  who  are  quite  unswayed  by  ephemeral 
literary  fashions,  and  quite  indifferent  to  the 
critical  catchwords  which  are  so  often  made  to 
do  duty  in  place  of  the  unchanging  laws  of  taste 
and  form.  These  unknown  and  silent  lovers  of 
fine  literature  are  probably  the  real  readers,  and 
the  real  judges,  by  whose  judgment  in  the  long 
run  the  poet  stands  or  falls.  They  are  superior 
to  the  mere  virtuosity  of  the  professional  con- 
noisseur, for  they  are  not  blase  as  he  is,  but  have 
kept  alive  their  original  faculty  of  enjoying  those 
writers  who  tread  the  great  main  road  of  the  mind ; 
who  belong  to  the  centre  party  of  literature  ;  who 


26  THE   POET'S    PLACE 

do  not  loiter  long  in  the  by-paths  or  fix  their  abode 
in  some  blind  alley  of  thought  or  style.  This  informal 
judiciary  is  our  nearest  living  approach  to  that 
ultimate  court  of  literary  appeal  which  we  call 
posterity  ;  and  I  venture  to  prophesy  that  before 
our  century  is  twenty  years  older  these  serious 
lovers  of  serious  literature,  for  whom  the  poet  has 
still  his  very  real  place  in  the  scheme  of  life,  will 
have  largely  augmented  their  numbers. 

Nor  would  it  surprise  me  if  such  an  increase  of 
their  forces  should  coincide  with  some  falling  off 
in  the  relative  numerical  strength  of  the  readers 
of  prose  fiction.  The  position  of  prose  fiction  is 
at  present  apparently  so  impregnable,  its  conquest 
of  the  public  seems  so  complete,  that  most  of  us 
can  hardly  bring  ourselves  to  conceive  the  possi- 
bility of  the  fall  of  the  novel  from  its  high  estate. 
And  yet  the  novel,  as  we  nowadays  understand  it, 
is  a  form  of  literature  so  modern — I  suppose  it 
dates  virtually  from  the  author  of  Clarissa  Har- 
low e — that  it  must  surely  have  been  called  into 
existence  by  some  phase  of  taste  which  is  itself  also 
modern,  and  which,  born  of  an  age,  may  pass  with 
an  age.  For  it  is  only  in  the  hands  of  its  very  greatest 
masters  that  the  novel  can  truly  be  called  a  form  of 
art.    In  lesser  hands  it  is  not  so  much  an  art  as  a 


IN   THE   SCHEME   OF   LIFE  27 

game — the  game  of  keeping  up  the  ball  of  the 
narrative,  of  holding  the  reader's  attention  by 
alternately  gratifying  and  piquing  his  curiosity,  of 
resorting  to  innumerable  shifts  and  transparent 
devices  which  are  scarcely  the  methods  of  an 
art,  in  the  great  sense  of  that  word.  The  endless 
conversations,  usually  unmemorable  in  themselves  ; 
the  so-called  realism ;  the  often  indiscriminate 
transcription  of  life,  as  if  everything  in  life  had  an 
equal  value  ;  all  this  has  about  it  something  which 
scarcely  seems  to  smack  of  permanency.  Art  is 
above  all  eclectic.  It  selects,  it  does  not  merely 
throw  "  life  "  at  you  in  handfuls.  It  fixes  its  eye 
upon  large  essential  features  of  things,  it  refuses  to 
have  its  attention  frittered  away  upon  a  thousand 
accidental  details.  Think  of  the  great  human 
stories  in  the  Bible  ;  masterpieces  of  narration  ; 
stories  told  with  the  consummate  perfection  of 
narrative  art,  with  epic  breadth  and  with  what  I 
will  venture  to  call  epic  brevity ;  no  long-spun 
dialogue  between  the  titanic  actors  in  the  drama  ; 
no  chronicle  of  the  expression  of  their  faces  or  the 
tone  of  their  voices,  nothing  but  the  huge  elemental 
facts  and  events  put  before  you  with  a  huge  ele- 
mental simplicity.  Take  the  story  of  Judith  and 
Holofernes  in  the  Apocrypha.    There  you  have  a 


28  THE   POET'S    PLACE 

story  on  the  grandest  lines,  superb  in  the  sweep 
of  its  action,  and  told  in  about  as  many  words 
as  would  suffice  to  fill  a  dozen  pages  of  a  modern 
novel.  That  is  the  kind  of  narrative  art  which 
reaches  and  stirs  us  after  thousands  of  years  ;  not 
the  kind  of  narrative  art  which  preserves  a  faithful 
record  of  how  the  hero  of  the  story  coughed  slightly 
at  a  moment  of  supreme  crisis  in  his  fate,  or  how 
the  heroine  at  a  similar  juncture  wore  a  sprig  of 
primroses  in  a  dress  of  some  fluffy  white  material. 
In  short  it  is  my  opinion — an  opinion,  I  am 
aware,  which  is  shared  by  few  persons  at  present, 
and  probably  by  no  novelist — that  the  novel, 
as  nowadays  understood,  will  pass  away,  or 
at  all  events  will  cease  to  dominate  the  situa- 
tion— to  upset  the  balance  of  power,  as  it  now 
does,  among  the  republics  and  principalities  of 
literature.  Fiction  is  really  the  arch-enemy  of 
literature  at  the  present  time.  The  very  word 
"  literature "  seems  in  most  people's  mouths  to 
mean  scarcely  anything  but  novels  and  tales. 
Now  we  have  had  amongst  us  in  England  during 
the  past  quarter  of  a  century  some  gifted  novelists, 
but  we  have  also  had  some  very  real  poets — poets 
whose  names  and  achievement  would,  in  my  opinion, 
add  lustre  to  any  age  or  nation.  They  occupy  almost 


IN   THE    SCHEME   OF   LIFE  29 

no  place  in  the  public  eye  ;  they  receive  almost  no 
substantial  rewards ;  and  they  are  everlastingly 
being  told  what  feeble  and  degenerate  successors 
they  are  to  the  poets  who,  being  dead,  are 
commonly  called  the  Victorian  Giants.  Your 
novelist,  as  a  rule,  gets  his  due  rewards  in  this 
life.  Your  poet,  as  a  rule,  does  not.  Now  it  is  no 
part  of  my  purpose  to  attempt  any  estimate  of 
the  work  of  my  poetical  contemporaries  in  England. 
All  that  I  shall  do  is  to  offer  them  my  most  sincere 
condolences  on  the  hard  fate  which  condemned 
them  to  be  born  there  at  all  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  If  you  wish  your  poets  to 
blossom  and  fructify  as  Nature  may  have  intended, 
you  must  give  them  some  warmth  and  sunshine. 
If  they  grow  up  in  an  Arctic  environment  of  per- 
petual frost,  a  killing  frost,  do  not  expect  from  them 
the  abounding  harvest  which  only  a  summer  sun 
can  fully  ripen.  Their  appropriate  place  in  the 
scheme  of  life  is  not  in  life's  cold  outer  courts  and 
shivering  ante-chambers.  Surely  it  is  to  the  great 
banqueting-hall  itself  that  the  minstrel  should  be 
bidden. 

The  true  function  of  the  poet  to-day  is  to  keep 
fresh  within  us  our  often  nagging  sense  of  life's 
greatness  and  grandeur.   Like  that  Helen  to  whom 


3o  THE   POET'S    PLACE 

Edgar  Poe  addressed  in  early  youth  some  of  his 
most  exquisite  verses,— her  whose  classic  beauty 
"  brought  him  home "  "to  the  glory  that  was 
Greece  and  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome  "—like 
her,  the  poet  recalls  us,  "  brings  us  home  "  to  a 
glory  we  are  but  too  prone  to  lose  sight  of,  to  a 
grandeur  we  continually  forget.  But  woe  be  unto 
him  if  he  himself  forgets  that  the  ancient  and  only 
way  in  which  he  can  truly  perform  this  function 
is  by  marrying  his  wisdom  to  a  worthy  music. 
We  have  had  poets  among  us  who  forgot  this 
lesson,  and  their  inevitable  nemesis  is  to  be  them- 
selves forgotten.  Neither  his  intellectual  brilliancy 
and  subtlety  nor  his  prodigal  wealth  of  fancy  has 
saved  Donne  from  the  fate  which  overtakes  all  poets 
who  lack  the  crowning  grace  of  harmonious  utter- 
ance. There  are  singers  to-day  who  seem  to  cultivate 
a  gratuitous  ruggedness,  forgetting  that  what  may 
be  effective  as  an  exception  becomes  merely  tedious 
when  it  constitutes  the  rule.  I  myself  should  imagine 
that  if  one  of  these  gentlemen  happened  in  a 
moment  of  absent-mindedness  to  write  a  perfectly 
regular  and  smooth-running  line,  he  would  spend, 
if  necessary,  days  and  nights  in  tormenting  and 
lacerating  it  out  of  all  shape  and  comeliness.  When 
I  find  myself  suffering  from  the  effects  of  what  some 


IN    THE   SCHEME   OF    LIFE  31 

persons  consider  ruggedly  powerful  diction,  my 
remedy  is  to  call  to  mind  and  inwardly  repeat  some 
passage  from  one  of  the  great  poets,  where  language 
and  metre  are  employed  with  imperial  mastery, 
and  yet  with  a  perfect  obedience  to  law — nay,  in 
a  spirit  that  rejoices  in  law  and  embraces  discipline 
with  ardour.  Fortunately  English  poetry  is  rich 
in  such  passages,  for  in  our  blank  verse  we  possess 
a  measure  which  without  any  violent  distortion 
of  the  normal  line  can  be  almost  infinitely  varied 
in  structure  and  cadence  and  modulation  by  the 
architectonic  power  of  real  metrical  genius.  Our 
greatest  poets  exemplify  this  abundantly — but 
then  theirs  is  a  kind  of  poetry  which  disdains  all 
oddity,  all  quaintness,  all  violence  ;  a  kind  of  poetry 
in  which  power  is  wedded  to  grace,  in  perfect 
nuptial  bliss. 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  the  foregoing  observations 
were  jotted  down  during  my  rather  uneven  progress 
towards  you  across  the  Atlantic  in  the  teeth  of 
adverse  winds  which  seemed  to  typify  somewhat 
the  fate  of  the  modern  bard.  Since  my  arrival 
on  these  shores  I  have  been  told  that  here  also  the 
public  interest  in  poetry  is  visibly  on  the  wane. 
I  have  even  been  warned  that  I  could  scarcely  choose 


32  THE    POET'S    PLACE 

a  more  unpopular  subject  on  which  to  discourse 
than  that  calling  of  which  I  myself  am  a  humble 
practitioner.  If  that  be  so,  then  the  adverse  winds 
to  which  I  allude  indicate  a  meteorological  con- 
dition affecting  a  wider  geographical  area  than 
I  had  supposed.  Now  here  in  America,  you  are 
at  any  rate  to  be  congratulated  upon  your  com- 
parative freedom  from  the  particular  kind  of  social 
influences  which  in  the  mother  country  are  apt  to 
affect  unduly — to  affect  illegitimately — the  mental 
tone  of  large  masses  of  human  beings.  In  England 
it  is  possible  for  a  frivolous  aristocracy,  an  idea- 
less  plutocracy,  or  a  somewhat  unintellectual 
court,  in  a  considerable  measure,  to  set  the 
tone  of  the  entire  community.  King  Edward  VII 
was  a  man  with  fine  human  qualities  which  we 
must  all  admire,  but  he  was  not  furiously  addicted 
to  literature,  and  to  extol  him  as  a  patron  of  litera- 
ture would  be  the  insincerest  flattery.  Perhaps 
you  will  say  that  patronage,  with  its  tendency  to 
impair  the  independence  of  the  patronized,  is  the 
last  thing  to  be  desired  in  the  real  interests  of 
Letters ;  and  in  theory  this  is  true,  but  in  practice 
it  is  perhaps  disputable.  Similarly  one  may  admit 
that  titles  and  honorific  distinctions  are  poor  things 
in  themselves,  while  recognizing  that  in  a  country 


IN   THE   SCHEME   OF   LIFE  33 

like  England  they  still  retain  some  of  the  symbolic 
value  of  insignia,  and  may  occasionally  serve  the 
useful  purpose  of  investing  certain  achievements 
which  are  more  real  than  spectacular  with  a  dignity 
visible  to  the  general  eye.  In  England,  not  state 
action  only,  but  the  personality  of  the  heads  of  the 
state  and  of  the  occupants  of  august  positions  can 
affect  profoundly  the  whole  mental  atmosphere. 
King  George  and  Queen  Mary  are  setting  an  admir- 
able example  to  their  people  in  all  things  ethical ;  if 
they  can  set  an  equally  admirable  example  in  the 
direction  of  things  intellectual,  their  record  will  be 
a  truly  illustrious  one.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  you  in 
America  are  to  be  felicitated  on  the  fact  that  you  are 
not  at  the  mercy  of  those  chance  currents,  those  for- 
tuitous influences,  which  are  capable  of  playing  so 
large  a  part  in  the  life  of  my  countrymen.  If  ever 
there  was  a  nation  that  seemed  to  hold  its  destinies 
in  its  own  hands  and  to  be  master  of  its  own  soul, 
that  nation  is  the  United  States  of  America.  If  you 
let  the  intellectual  life  of  your  country  decline,  you 
cannot  lay  the  blame  on  a  king  or  an  aristocracy. 
As  you  look  back  on  the  history  of  your  country, 
does  it  not  seem  to  you  that  America  would  have 
been  distinctly  a  poorer  place  in  the  human  sense 
if  it  had  not  been  for  her  poets  ?    It  seems  to  me 


34   THE  POET'S  PLACE  IN  THE  SCHEME  OF  LIFE 

that  the  air  of  America  is  the  sweeter  because 
Longfellow  breathed  it.  It  is  a  vivid  and  a  vitalizing 
air  ;  a  tonic  air  ;  an  air  that  vibrates  with  powerful 
impulses.  It  feels  to  me  like  an  air  which  a  poet 
might  be  glad  to  have  been  born  in  ;  an  air  which 
a  poet  might  be  glad  to  sing  in.  But  do  not  ask  him 
to  sing  in  a  solitude.  Do  not  ask  him  to  sing  before 
an  audience  which  visibly  melts  away  while  he 
sings.  Give  him  something  of  your  hearts,  and  he 
will  give  you  all  his  own  heart  in  return.  Give  him 
a  place — an  honourable  and  honoured  place — in 
your  scheme  of  life. 


CONTENTS 


Dedication — To  Robert  Underwood  Johnson    .  5 

Preface      ........  7 

The  Poet's  Place  in  the  Scheme  of  Life          .  15 

The  Muse  in  Exile 39 

Dawn  on  the  Headland     .....  42 

To  a  Privileged  Thief       .....  44 

The  Centenary  of  Dickens         ....  46 

The  Three  Givers       ......  50 

Imperial  Mother          .          .          .          .          .          •  51 

Home  Truths 52 

Liberalism            .          .          .          .          .          .  53 

On  Pyrrho,  a  Great  Editor       .  .  .  -54 

A  Guess  in  Anthropology  .....  55 

A  Literary  Dialogue           .          .          .          .  58 

Summer's  Overthrow 62 

Dublin  Bay         .......  64 

Hymn  for  a  Progressive  People        ...  66 

Ireland  Once  More    ......  68 

On  Killiney  Strand  ......  7° 

Part  of  my  Story 71 

The  Sappers  and  Miners 73 

A  Full  Confession     ......  76 

A  Little  Ditty            ......  79 

35 


36                                      CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Indestructibles  .          .          .          .          .          .81 

Peace          .... 

82 

A  Retort    . 

83 

Clontarf     . 

84 

"  Ireland's  Eye" 

85 

MOONSET    AND    SUNRISE 

87 

Science  and  Nature  . 

94 

A  Chance  Meeting 

95 

To  a  Certain  Ministry 

96 

The  Rash  Poet  . 

97 

Arthur  at  Tintagil:   A  Romaunt 

98 

Ulster's  Reward 

100 

SONNETS 

To  Theodore  Roosevelt     .          .          .          .          .105 

Till  that  Hour 

107 

To  an  American  Poet 

109 

To  an  English  Liberal 

in 

To  Miss  Clara  B.  Spence 

113 

The  Real  Reformer  . 

115 

THE    MUSE   IN    EXILE 


THE  MUSE  IN  EXILE 

Verse— a  light  handful— verse  again  I  bring  ; 

Verse  that  perhaps  had  glowed  with  lustier  hues 

Amid  more  fostering  air  :   for  it  was  born 

In  the  penurious  sunshine  of  an  Age 

That  does  not  stone  her  prophets,  but,  alas, 

Turns,  to  their  next  of  kin,  the  singers,  oft 

An  ear  of  stone  :   in  bare,  bleak  truth  an  Age 

That  banishes  the  poets,  as  he  of  old, 

The  great  child  of  the  soul  of  Socrates, 

Out  of  his  visionary  commonwealth 

Banished  them  ;  for  she  drives  them  coldly  forth 

From  where  alone  they  yearn  to  live — her  heart ; 

Scourges  them  with  the  scourge  of  apathy, 

39 


4o  THE    MUSE    IN    EXILE 

From  out  her  bosom's  rich  metropolis, 

To  a  distant,  desert  province  of  her  thoughts, 

A  region  grey  and  pale  :  or,  crueller  still, 

Gives  them,  at  times,  gusts  of  applause,  and  then 

Remands  them  to  new  frosts  of  unconcern  ; 

Nay,  to  atone  for  some  brief  generous  hour, 

Holds  back  their  dues,  husbands  the  heartening 

word. 
Until  they  dwell  where  praise  cheers  not  the  praised, 
And  scorn  and  honour  are  received  in  like 
Silence,  and  laurel  and  poppy  are  as  one. 

Let  me  not  slight  her.     Let  me  not  do  wrong 
To  her  whose  child  I  am  :  this  giant  Age, 
Cumbered  with  her  own  hugeness  as  is  the  wont 
Of  giants.    Yet  too  openly  she  herself 
Hath  slighted  one  of  Time's  great  offspring  :  she 
Hath  slighted  Song  ;  and  Song  will  be  revenged : 


THE    MUSE    IN    EXILE  41 

Song  will  survive  her  ;  Song  will  follow  her  hearse, 
And  either  weep  or  dance  upon  her  grave. 
For  in  Life's  midmost  chamber  there  still  burns 
Upon  the  ancient  hearth  the  ancient  fire, 
Whence  are  all  flamelike  things,  the  unquenchable 

Muse 
Among  them,  who,  though  meanly  lodged  to-day, 
In  dreariest  outlands  of  the  world's  regard, 
Foresees  the  hour  when  Man  shall  once  more  feel 
His  need  of  her,  and  call  the  exile  home. 


DAWN    ON    THE    HEADLAND 

Dawn — and  a  magical  stillness :  on  earth,  quiescence 
profound  ; 
On  the  waters  a  vast  Content,  as  of  hunger  ap- 
peased and  stayed  ; 
In  the  heavens  a  silence  that  seems  not  mere  priva- 
tion of  sound, 
But  a  thing  with  form  and  body,  a  thing  to  be 
touched  and  weighed  ! 

Yet  I  know  that  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of  the  roar  of  the 

cosmic  wheel, 

In  the  hot  collision  of  Forces,  and  clangour  of 

boundless  Strife, 

42 


DAWN   ON   THE   HEADLAND  43 

Mid  the  sound  of  the  speed  of  the  worlds,  the  rushing 
worlds,  and  the  peal 
Of  the  thunder  of  Life. 


TO    A    PRIVILEGED    THIEF 

Blackbird,  that  in  our  garden,  here  and  there 

Nibbling  an  apple  or  pear, 

Hast  marred  so  many,  and  slaked  thyself  on  none- 

If  thou  wouldst  come  and  eat  thy  fill  of  one 

Instead  of  ruining  twenty, 

Were  it  not  kindlier  done  ? 

Thou  still  wouldst  have  thy  share 

Of  this  our  plenty, 

This  ruddy  issue  of  the  earth  and  sun. 

But  ah,  thou  dost  for  thine  exemplar  take 

The  loveless  rake, 

The  shallow  libertine, 

44 


TO   A   PRIVILEGED   THIEF  45 

Who  wanders  among  maidens,  leaving  each 
Like  a  peck'd  apple  or  a  bitten  peach, 
For  other  palates  spoiled  ;  nor  dares  to  win 
One  heart  in  rich  completeness, 
And  banquet  all  his  days  on  its  upyielded  sweetness. 


THE    CENTENARY    OF    DICKENS 

Lines  read  by  the  author  at  the  Dickens  Centenary  celebration  at  the 
Carnegie  Hall,  New  York. 

When  Nature  first  designed, 

In  her  all-procreant  mind, 

The  man  whom  here  to-night  we  are  met  to  honour — 

When  first  the  idea  of  Dickens  flashed  upon  her — 

"  Where,  where,"  she  said,  "  in  all  my  populous 

Earth, 

Shall  this  prodigious  child  be  brought  to  birth  ? 

Where  shall  he  have  his  earliest  wondering  look 

Into  my  magic  book  ? 

Shall  he  be  born  where  life  runs  like  a  brook, 

Far  from  the  sound  and  shock  of  mighty  deeds, 

Among  soft  English  meads  ? 

46 


THE    CENTENARY   OF    DICKENS  47 

Or  shall  he  first  my  pictured  volume  scan 
Where  London  lifts  its  hot  and  fevered  brow, 
For  cooling  Night  to  fan  ? 
Nay,  nay,"  she  said  ;  "  I  have  a  happier  plan  ! 
For  where,  at  Portsmouth,  on  the  embattled  tides, 
The  ships  of  war  step  out  with  thundering  prow, 
And  shake  their  stormy  sides — 
In  yonder  place  of  arms,  whose  gaunt  sea  wall 
Flings  to  the  clouds  the  far-heard  bugle-call, 
He  shall  be  born  amid  the  drums  and  guns, 
He  shall  be  born  among  my  fighting  sons, 
Perhaps  the  greatest  warrior  of  them  all." 

So  there,  where  frown  the  forts  and  battle-gear, 
And  all  the  proud  sea  babbles  Nelson's  name, 
Into  the  world  this  later  hero  came, 
He,  too,  a  man  that  knew  all  moods  but  fear, 


48  THE   CENTENARY   OF   DICKENS 

He,  too,  a  fighter  !    Yet  not  his  the  strife 

That  leaves  dark  scars  on  the  fair  face  of  life. 

He  did  not  fight  to  rend  the  world  apart, 

He  fought  to  make  it  one  in  mind  and  heart, 

Building  a  broad  and  noble  bridge  to  span 

The  icy  chasm  that  sunders  man  from  man. 

Wherever  Wrong  had  fixed  its  bastions  deep, 

There  did  his  fierce  yet  gay  assault  surprise 

Some  fortress  girt  with  lucre  or  with  lies  ; 

There  his  light  battery  stormed  some  ponderous 

keep  ; 
There  charged  he  up  the  steep  ; 
A  knight  on  whom  no  palsying  torpor  fell, 
Keen  to  the  last  to  break  a  lance  with  Hell. 
And  still  undimmed  his  conquering  weapons  shine  ; 
On  his  bright  sword  no  spot  of  rust  appears  ; 
And  still,  across  the  years, 


THE   CENTENARY   OF   DICKENS  49 

His  soul  goes  forth  to  battle,  and  in  the  face 
Of  whatsoe'er  is  false,  or  cruel,  or  base, 
He  hurls  his  gage,  and  leaps  among  the  spears, 
Being  armed  with  pity  and  love,  and  scorn  divine, 
Immortal  laughter,  and  immortal  tears. 


THE    THREE    GIVERS 

England  gave  me  sun  and  storm, 
The  food  on  which  my  spirit  throve  ; 

America  gave  me  hand-grasps  warm, 
And  Ireland  gave  me  her  I  love. 

Heirs  of  unequal  wealth  they  are, 
These  noble  lands,  these  givers  three 

And  it  was  the  poorest  one  by  far, 
That  gave  the  richest  gift  to  me. 


50 


IMPERIAL    MOTHER 

Imperial  Mother,  from  whose  breasts 
We  drank  as  babes  the  pride  whereby 

We  question  ev'n  thine  own  behests, 
And  judge  thee  with  no  timorous  eye  ;- 

Oft  slow  to  hear  when  thou  dost  call, 
Oft  vext  with  an  unstable  will, 

When  once  a  rival  seeks  thy  fall 

We  are  thy  sons  and  daughters  still ! 

The  love  that  halts,  the  faith  that  veers, 

Are  then  deep  sunk  as  in  the  Sea  : 

The  Sea  where  thou  must  brook  no  peers, 

And  halve  with  none  thy  sovereignty. 
51 


HOME    TRUTHS 

It  is  not  the  flight  from  the  country, 
It  is  not  the  rush  to  the  town, 

It  is  ignorance,  ignorance,  ignorance, 
Will  bring  old  England  down. 

Though  vast  our  overlordship, 

And  ancient  our  renown, 
If  the  unfed  mind  is  everywhere 

Twill  pull  old  England  down. 

Do  German  legions  menace  ? 

Do  German  Dreadnoughts  frown  ? 

It  is  rather  the  German  schoolmaster 

May  smite  old  England  down. 
52 


LIBERALISM 

To  Liberalism  I  owe,  and  pay, 
Allegiance  whole  and  hearty, — 

The  Liberalism  which  has  to-day 
No  foe  like  the  Liberal  Party. 


53 


ON    PYRRHO,    A    GREAT    EDITOR 

Yes,  Pyrrho  was  my  hospitable  friend, 
Till,  at  the  nineteenth  century's  stormy  end, 
Upon  one  thunderous  theme,  we  failed  to  agree. 
Thenceforward,  "  Oh,  the  difference  to  me  !  " 
Thenceforward,  if  I  pined,  I  pined  in  vain 
For  Pyrrho's  conversation  or  champagne. 

And  whose  opinion,  Pyrrho's  or  my  own, 
Was  wisest  ?    Time  may  tell,  and  Time  alone. 
I  do  but  know  that  mine  has  cost  me  dear, 
While  his  brought  in  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year. 


54 


A    GUESS    IN    ANTHROPOLOGY 

When  Man  was  yet  so  young  upon  the  Earth 

As  to  be  just  as  lofty  or  as  lowly 

As  other  creatures,  whether  hoofed  or  taloned, 

Feathered  or  scaled,   that   shared  with  him   this 

orb  ; 

It  chanced  upon  a  day  that  he  peered  down 

From  his  hid  perch,  high  in  some  forest  tree, 

And  saw  beneath  him  on  the  ground  a  beast 

Of  alien  kind,  his  foe.    Then  did  he  spring, 

With  something  'twixt  a  chatter  and  a  screech — 

Knowing  not  other  language — toward  his  victim  ; 

And  as  from  branch  to  branch  he  swung  himself, 

With  long,  thick,  hirsute  arms,  down  to  the  ground, 

55 


56  A   GUESS    IN   ANTHROPOLOGY 

It  so  befell  that  the  last  branch  of  all 

Broke  off  in  his  right  hand.    Twas  his  first  weapon  ! 

The  father  of  all  weapons  wielded  since  ! 

Nay,  more — from  this,  all  instruments  and  tools, 

Whether  they  be  of  war  or  peace,  descend. 

Thus,  in  that  pregnant  hour,  that  held  within  it 

All  after  ages — thus,  and  then,  and  there, 

Took  he  the  first  tremendous  step  of  fate 

In  the  long  task  of  making  earth,  stone,  iron, 

His  servants.    Thus  his  great  career  began. 

Such  is  my  guess — which  whoso  will  may  scorn, 

And  whoso  will  may  ponder — as  to  how 

Dawned    through    the    darkness    this    our   human 

empire 
Over  the  beast  and  bird,  this  human  sway 
Of  the  earth  and  air,  this  governance  and  power 


A  GUESS    IN   ANTHROPOLOGY  57 

Whereby  we  bind  to  our  hot  chariot  wheels 
The  captive  world,  and  shall  not  pause  content 
Until  all  nature  bear  the  yoke  of  man, 
As  man  himself  beareth  the  yoke  of  God. 

June  4,  1912. 


A    LITERARY    DIALOGUE 

[The  speakers,  X.  X.  and  W.  W.] 

X.  X. 

A  poet  always  in  a  fuss  ; 

A  bustling  poet,  who  thought  to  utter 

All  Life's  meaning  in  a  stutter, 

And  whose  poetry  is  thus 

One  interminable  splutter  ; — 

An  intellectual  acrobat, 

Skilled  in  a  sort  of  strenuous  clowning — 

W.  W. 

God  bless  us,  why,  you  don't  mean  Browning  ? 
58 


A   LITERARY   DIALOGUE  59 

X.  X. 

He  made  us  stand  agape,  but  we 
Were  wearied  in  the  end  by  that 
Intolerable  agility, 
As  of  some  vast,  performing  flea — 

W.  W. 

Come,  come,  this  is  too  much  for  me. 

X.  X. 

As  to  his  "  optimism,"  it's  just 
The  doctrine  of  the  well-dined  man 
Who,  o'er  his  port,  takes  God  on  trust, 
Lauds,  with  sound  lungs,  the  Cosmic  Plan, 
And  finds  all  perfect  beyond  question, 


60  A   LITERARY   DIALOGUE 

Evil  itself  being  good  when  seen 
Through  a  supremely  good  digestion. 

W.  W. 

But  if  it's  Browning  that  you  mean — 

XX. 

Great  poets  bring  their  fruits  full-grown 
Only  the  fine  results  are  shown 
Of  their  great  thinking  :   he  displays 
Each  crude  process  to  your  gaze, 
Or  gives  you  processes  alone  ; 
As  if  a  builder's  hand  should  raise 
No  tower,  no  stately,  gracious  thing, 
Looking  out  on  time  and  tide, 


A   LITERARY   DIALOGUE  61 

But  a  wilderness  of  scaffolding, 
And 

W.  W. 
Well,  go  on. 

X.  X. 

And  nought  beside  ! 


SUMMER'S   OVERTHROW 

Summer    is    fallen,    is    conquered,    her    greatness 
ravished  away. 

We  saw  her  broken  with  tempest  on  cliffs  of  the 

Irish  shore  ; 
We  saw  her  flee  like  the  wraith  of  a  monstrous  rose 

before 
The  airy  invisible  hunters  that  hunted  her  night 

and  day. 
And  once  we  believed  them  frustrate,  believed  them 

reft  of  their  prey, 
For  she  suddenly  flashed  anew  into  violent  splendour, 

defied 
The  yelling  pack  of  the  storm,  and  turned,  and  held 

them  at  bay. 

62 


SUMMER'S   OVERTHROW  63 

In  superb  despair  she  faced  them,  she  towered  like 

June  once  more, — 
Then,  sinking,  shook  on  the  world  her  golden  ruins, 

and  died. 


DUBLIN   BAY 

On  Dublin  Bay,  on  Dublin  Bay, 

The  ships  come  in,  the  ships  go  out, 
The  great  gulls  hover  and  wheel  about, 

The  white  sails  gleam,  and  shimmer  away  ; 

And  over  the  heathery  heights  we  stray, 

To  watch,  through  a  haze  of  sultry  drought, 
The  ships  come  in,  the  ships  go  out, 

Yonder  below  us  on  Dublin  Bay. 

We  have  heard  the  clang  of  Life's  mean  fray, 

Where  joyless  sounded  the  victor's  shout, 

And  brief  as  the  flash  of  a  leaping  trout 

Was  Pride  that  pranced  in  the  summer  ray  ; 

64 


DUBLIN   BAY  65 

And  little  we  think  of  the  world  to-day, 
Whether  it  smile  or  whether  it  pout, 
For  the  ships  come  in,  and  the  ships  go  out, 
And  yonder  below  is  Dublin  Bay. 

Grief  may  visit  us, — who  shall  say  ? 

Time  may  spite  us,  and  Fortune  flout ; 

Care,  with  her  brood,  a  doleful  rout, 
Care  may  follow  us  all  the  way  ; 
But  Love  is  ours,  and  Love  will  stay, 

Love  that  knows  not  shadow  of  doubt, 

While  the  ships  come  in,  while  the  ships  go  out, 
Yonder  below  us  on  Dublin  Bay. 


HYMN  FOR  A  PROGRESSIVE  PEOPLE 

Great  and  fair  is  she,  our  Land, 
High  of  heart  and  strong  of  hand  ; 
Dawn  is  on  her  forehead  still, 
In  her  veins  youth's  arrowy  thrill. 

Hers  are  riches,  might  and  fame  ; 
All  the  earth  resounds  her  name  ; 
In  her  roadsteads  navies  ride  : 
Hath  she  need  of  aught  beside  ? 

Power  Unseen,  before  whose  eyes 

Nations  fall  and  nations  rise, 

Grant  she  climb  not  to  her  goal 

All-forgetful  of  the  Soul  ! 
66 


HYMN    FOR   A   PROGRESSIVE    PEOPLE         67 
Firm  in  honour  be  she  found, 
Justice-armed  and  mercy-crowned, 
Blest  in  labour,  blest  in  ease, 
Blest  in  noiseless  charities. 

Unenslaved  by  things  that  must 
Yield  full  soon  to  moth  and  rust, 
Let  her  hold  a  light  on  high 
Men  unborn  may  travel  by. 

Mightier  still  she  then  shall  stand, 
Moulded  by  Thy  secret  hand, 
Power  Eternal,  at  whose  call 
Nations  rise  and  nations  fall ! 


IRELAND   ONCE  MORE 

Wild  Erin  of  the  still  unconquered  heart ; 

Thou  whom  the  woeful  interloping  seas 

Have  blindly  riven  apart 

From  her  that  nursed  me  on  great  craggy  knees, 

Her  of  whose  dales  and  mountains  I  am  sprung  : 

Once  more  I  stray  among 

Fields  that  remember  thy  calamities, 

And  hills  that  muse  on  ancient  weeping  years  ; 

And  I  behold  how  beautiful  thou  art 

In  thine  immortal  tears. 

Yes,  thou  art  fair,  and  Sorrow  on  thy  brow 

Hath  deeper  charm  than  all  the  brood  of  Joy  ; 

68 


IRELAND   ONCE    MORE  69 

But  sad  have  been  thy  harpstrings  long  enow, 
And  ev'n  the  loveliness  of  grief  can  cloy. 
Oh,  come  thou  forth  and  put  the  Past  away, 
Oh,  bid  it  get  behind  thee  and  begone, 
And  with  thy  conquered  conqueror  speed  thou  on 
Unto  the  mightier  day. 
This  is  no  time  for  sundering  and  divorce, 
This  is  the  hour  for  closer  bonds  of  soul, 
In  one  great  march,  by  one  far-mounting  course, 
To  one  majestic  goal. 

Old  Hate  is  dying  :  let  Ignorance,  mother  of  Hate, 
Follow  her  leperous  daughter  through  Hell's  gate  ; 
And  when  from  both  at  last  the  breath  is  fled, 
Then  for  their  carrion  corses  let  there  be 
A  sea-deep  grave,  to  hide  them  till  the  sea 
Gives  up  its  dead. 


ON   KILLINEY   STRAND 

The  sea  before  me 

Is  harassed  and  stormy  : 

The  low  sky  o'er  me 

Is  haggard  and  wan. 
With  grey  tides  foaming, 
And  drear  winds  roaming, 
And  tired  gulls  homing, 

Great  Night  comes  on. 


70 


PART  OF  MY  STORY 

We  met  when  you  were  in  the  May  of  life, 
And  I  had  left  its  June  behind  me  far. 

Some  barren  victories, — much  defeat  and  strife, — 
Had  marked  my  soul  with  many  a  hidden  scar. 

I  was  a  man  hurt  deep  with  blows  that  men 
Ne'er  guessed  at ;  strangely  weak — more  strangely 
strong ; 

Daring  at  times  ;  and  uttering  now  and  then, 
Out  of  a  turbid  heart,  a  limpid  song. 

Fitful  in  effort, — fixed  and  clear  in  aim  ; 

Poor,  but  not  envious  of  the  wealth  I  lack  ; 

Ever  half-scaling  the  hard  hill  of  fame, 

And  ever  by  some  evil  fate  flung  back, — 
7i 


72  PART   OF   MY   STORY 

Such  did  you  find  me,  in  that  city  grey 

Where  we  were  plighted,  O  my  comrade  true  : 
My  wife,  now  dearer  far  than  on  the  day 

When  this  our  love  was  new. 


THE  SAPPERS  AND  MINERS 

In  lands  that  still  the  heirs  of  Othman  sway, 

There  lives  a  legend,  wild  as  wildest  note 

Of  birds  that  haunt  the  Arabian  waste,  where  rolls 

Tigris  through  Baghdad  to  the  Persian  Sea. 

Tis  fabled  that  the  mighty  sorcerer, 

King  Solomon,  when  he  died,  was  sitting  aloft, 

Like  one  that  mused,  on  his  great  lion-throne  ; 

Sitting  with  head  bent  forward  o'er  his  staff, 

Whereon  with   both   his   hands   he   leaned.     And 

tribes 

And  peoples  moved  before  him,  in  their  awe 

Not  venturing  nigh  ;  and  tawny  fiercenesses, 

Panther  and  pard,  at  timorous  distance  couched  ; 

73 


74  THE   SAPPERS   AND    MINERS 

While  Figures  vast,  Forms  indeterminate, 
Demons  and  Genii,  the  Enchanter's  thralls, 
Cloudily  rose,  and  darkly  went  and  came. 
But  so  majestic  sat  he  lifeless  there, 
And  counterfeited  life  so  perfectly, 
That  change  of  hue  or  feature  was  by  none 
Seen,  and  none  guessed  him  dead,  and  every  knee 
Rendered  him  wonted  homage,  until  worms 
Gnawing  his  staff,  made  fall  that  last  support, 
And  with  it  fell  the  unpropped  Death,  divulged 
In  gorgeous  raiment  to  the  wondering  world. 

So  may  an  Empire,  from  whose  body  and  limbs 
The  spirit  hath  wholly  fled,  still  seem  to  breathe 
And  feel,  still  keep  its  living  posture,  still 
Cheat  with  similitude  of  glory  and  power 
The  gazing  Earth,  until  the  evil  things 


THE   SAPPERS   AND   MINERS  75 

That  burrow  in  secret,  and  by  night  destroy, 
Unseat  the  grandiose  Semblance,  and  man's  heart 
Hastes  to  forget  the  obeisances  he  made 
To  a  jewelled  corse,  long  ripe  for  sepulture. 


A   FULL  CONFESSION 

What  lands,  where  you  and  I  have  dwelt  or  strayed, 

What  lands,  you  ask  me,  Dearest,  love  I  best, 

After  this  Isle,  with  which  my  roots  are  woven 

Beyond  unravelling  ?   First,  your  motherland, 

Your  Erin,  dear  to  me  for  her  sweet  self, 

Dearer  for  one  sweet  daughter  whom  she  bore  : 

A  land  of  glowing,  kindling  countenances, 

A  land  where,  when  the  lips  are  oped  in  speech, 

All  the  lit  face  speaks  too  :  and,  next  to  her, 

America,  the  Supreme  Misunderstood, 

The  oft  aspersed,  oft  railed  at  and  reviled 

And  slandered  ;  in  whose  cities,  in  whose  streets 

And  avenues,  we  almost  thought  to  find, 

76 


A   FULL   CONFESSION  77 

Adored  and  supplicated  day  and  night, 
A  graven  image  throned  against  the  heavens, 
A  sculptor's  marble  dream  of  Mammon,  there 
Hymned  with  Te  Deum  by  ten  million  throats, 
But  found  instead  the  nourished  brain,  athirst 
For  nobler  things  than  lucre  ;  found  the  love 
Of  these  fair  things  sown  wide  in  fecund  soil : 
And  found  the  way  not  steep,  but  easy  and  smooth, 
To  that  best  hostel  for  all  travellers, 
The  Human  Heart  Divine.   How  can  we  think 
Coldly  of  such  a  land,  itself  so  warm 
In  its  accost  and  greeting  ?   There  we  won 
Friends  whom  to  lose  were  to  find  life  itself 
Less  winsome.   There,  too,  did  we  taste  awhile 
Sorrow,  not  pleasure  alone.  And  there  we  roamed 
Wide  as  from  Spain-remembering  shores,  that  watch 
The  hues  and  moods  of  a  chameleon  sea 


78  A   FULL   CONFESSION 

Beyond  Miami's  palms  and  orange-groves, 

To  where  Niagara  takes  the  infernal  plunge, 

And  out  of  the  grey  rage  of  the  abysm, 

Out  of  the  torment,  everlastingly 

Upbreathes  what  seems,  when  sunlight  touches  it, 

The  smoke  of  Hell,  lost  in  the  smile  of  God. 


A   LITTLE   DITTY 

Oh,  England  is  a  darling, 
And  Scotland  is  a  dear, 

And  well  I  love  their  faces 
At  any  time  of  year  ; 

But  on  a  summer  day 

My  heart  went  astray, 

And  I  gave  it  all  away 

To  bonny  Ireland. 

Oh,  hardy  is  the  thistle, 

And  comely  is  the  rose, 

But  witching  are  the  maids  where 

The  shy  shamrock  grows  ; 
79 


8o  A   LITTLE   DITTY 

And  I  knew,  upon  the  day 
When  I  gave  my  heart  away, 
It  would  ever  after  stay 
In  bonny  Ireland. 


THE  INDESTRUCTIBLES 

The  dullards  of  past  generations,  the  undiscerning  crew 
That  turned  deaf  ears  unto  Shelley,  that  turned 
blind  eyes  upon  Keats, 
Unchangeably  reincarnate,  invincibly  born  anew, 
Still  buzz  in  the  press  and  the  salon,  still  lord  it 
in  learning's  seats. 

Do  you  think  they  are  ever  conquered  ?    Do  you 

think  they  are  ever  slain  ? 
They  are  secular,  sempiternal ;   the  Powers  that 

cannot  die. 
When  all  things  else  have  perished,  Stupidity  shall 

remain, 

And  sit  secure  on  the  ruins  of  every  star  of  the  sky. 
f  81 


PEACE 

Lines  in  anticipation  of  the  centenary  of  the  conclusion  of  peace 
between  England  and  the  United  States. 

Behold  a  marvel  great ! 

Two  mighty  peoples,  in  two  hemispheres, 

Throughout  a  hundred  years, 

Slaying  not  one  another  in  murderous  hate  ! 

This  is  the  miracle  we  shall  celebrate 

With  pomps,  and  feasts,  and  state. 

O  Nations,  count  not  peace  itself  an  end, 

But  something  which,  achieved,  we  must  transcend. 

Be  glad  of  war's  surcease, 

But  give  no  rest  unto  the  soul  of  Man 

Till  he  has  fared  some  stages  further  than 

Mere  Peace. 

82 


A   RETORT 

Year  after  year  it  grows  more  hard 

For  the  Muse  to  capture  the  world's  regard, 

And  the  world  asks  lightly,  What  ails  the  bard  ? 

But  it  never  asks  if  some  deep  ill 

Be  making  its  Soul  more  hard  to  thrill — 

Some  malady  there,  past  leech's  skill. 


«3 


CLONTARF 

Here,  nigh  a  thousand  years  ago, 

King  Brian  fought  the  Dane, 
On  a  day  of  ruin  and  overthrow, 

And  at  eve  in  his  tent  was  slain. 

And  here,  where  thrones  came  crashing  down 
On  the  wild,  ensanguined  shore, 

In  a  drooping  suburb  of  Dublin  town 
To-day  the  tramcars  roar. 

And  they  jolt  me  back  with  a  ruthless  whirl, 

From  ages  of  myth  and  mist, 

To  an  Ireland  ruled  by  a  harmless  earl 

And  an  innocent  essayist. 
84 


"IRELAND'S  EYE" 

A  drear,  waste,  island  rock,  by  tempests  worn, 

Gnawed  by  the  seas  and  naked  to  the  sky, 
It  bears  the  name  it  hath  for  ages  borne 
Of  "  Ireland's  Eye." 

It  looks  far  eastward  o'er  the  desert  foam  ; 

Round  it  the  whimpering,  wild  sea- voices  cry. 
The  gulls  and  cormorants  have  their  stormy  home 
On  Ireland's  Eye. 

A  strange  and  spectral  head  the  gaunt  crag  rears, 

And  ghostly  seem  the  wings  that  hover  nigh. 

Are  these  dim  rains  the  phantoms  of  old  tears 

In  Ireland's  Eye  ? 
85 


86  "IRELAND'S   EYE" 

The  tide  ebbs  fast  ;  the  wind  droops  low  to-day, 

Feeble  as  dying  hate  that  hates  to  die. 
Blow,  living  airs,  and  blow  the  mists  away 
From  Ireland's  Eye. 


MOONSET  AND   SUNRISE 

The  forts  of  midnight  fall  at  last ; 

The  ancient,  baleful  powers 
Yield  up,  with  countenances  aghast, 

Their  dragon-guarded  towers. 
Henceforth,  their  might  as  dust  being  trod, 
Tis  easier  to  believe  in  God. 

Where  were  the  great  ones  of  the  earth, 

Kaiser  and  Czar  and  King  ? 
Small  thanks  to  them,  for  this  glad  birth 

Whereat  the  daystars  sing  ! 

The  little  lands,  with  hearts  of  flame, 

Have  put  the  mighty  thrones  to  shame. 
87 


MOONSET  AND    SUNRISE 
To-morrow,  who  shall  dare  deny 

The  heroes  their  reward, 
And  snatch  from  under  Victory's  eye 

The  harvest  of  the  sword  ? 
Not  we  ourselves,  a  second  time, 
Could  dye  our  hands  with  such  a  crime. 

Idle  the  dream,  that  e'er  the  Turk 

Can  change  into  a  Man  ! 
Have  we  not  seen  his  handiwork 

Since  first  his  reign  began, — 
Since  first  he  fed  his  lust  and  rage 
On  ravished  youth  and  slaughtered  age 

If,  of  his  power,  no  lingering  trace 
Remained  to  insult  the  sky, 


MOONSET   AND    SUNRISE  89 

Were  not  this  earth  a  better  place 

Wherein  to  live  and  die  ? 
If  he  could  vanish  from  the  Day, 
What  but  a  stain  were  cleansed  away  ? 

Three  lustrums  have  in  turmoil  sped 

Since  Greece,  unfriended,  hurled 
Her  javelin  at  the  python's  head, 

Before  a  languid  world, 
While  the  great  Kings,  in  far-off  tones, 
Mumbled  upon  their  frozen  thrones. 

She  dared  too  much,  or  dared  too  soon, 

And  broke  in  disarray, 
Where,  underneath  his  crescent  moon, 

The  coiled  Corruption  lay. 


9o  MOONSET   AND    SUNRISE 

Heartened  anew,  the  scaly  thing 
Returned  unto  his  ravening. 

But  now  his  empire,  more  and  more 
In  narrowing  confines  penned, 

An  old  and  putrefying  sore, 
Hath  festered  to  its  end  ; 

Nor  far  the  hour,  when  he  at  last 

Shall,  like  a  foul  disease,  have  passed. 

Pity  for  others  had  he  none  ; 

In  storms  of  blood  and  fire 
He  slew  the  daughter  with  the  son, 

The  mother  with  the  sire  ; 
And  oft,  where  Earth  had  felt  his  tread, 
The  quick  were  envious  of  the  dead. 


MOONSET   AND   SUNRISE  91 

But  since  his  fierceness  and  his  strength, 

His  faded  pomps  august, 
His  courage  and  his  guile,  at  length 

Sink  into  night  and  dust, 
For  him,  too,  let  Compassion  plead, 
Ev'n  as  for  all  of  Adam's  seed. 

O  lands  by  his  dominion  curst 
Throughout  five  hundred  years, — 

You  that  could  ne'er  appease  his  thirst 
With  all  your  blood  and  tears, — 

In  this  new  day  that  breaks  divine 

He  shall  drink  deep  another  wine. 

The  cup  of  lowliness  shall  slake 
Lips  that  nought  else  might  cool, 


92 


MOONSET  AND   SUNRISE 
When  hurricanes  of  terror  shake 

The  towers  of  Istamboul, 
And  blasts  blown  on  that  Golden  Horn 
Arouse  the  City  of  Dreadful  Morn. 

For  now  the  hour  of  dreams  is  past ; 

The  gibbering  ghosts  depart ; 
And  Man  is  unashamed  at  last 

To  have  a  human  heart. 
And  lo,  the  doors  of  dawn  ajar, 
And  in  the  East  again  a  Star  ! 

Loveless  and  cold  was  Europe's  sin, 
Loveless  the  path  she  chose, 

And  self-upbraidings  deep  within 
She  strangled  as  they  rose  ; 


MOONSET  AND   SUNRISE  93 

But  that  dark  trespass  of  our  own 
Forbids  that  we  should  cast  a  stone. 

Enough,  if  hands  that  heretofore 

Laboured  to  bar  His  road, 
Delay  henceforward  nevermore 

The  charioteers  of  God, 
Who  halt  and  slumber,  but  anon, 
With  burning  wheels,  drive  thundering  on. 

November  9,  191 2. 


SCIENCE  AND   NATURE 

You  babble  of  your  "  conquest  of  the  air  "  ; 
Of  Nature's  secrets  one  by  one  laid  bare. 
Her  secrets  !  They  are  evermore  withheld  : 
'Tis  only  in  her  porches  you  have  dwelled. 
Could  you  once  lift  her  veil  as  you  desire, 
You  were  burnt  up  as  chaff  before  her  fire. 

When  will  you  learn  your  place  and  rank  in  Mind  ? 

Art  can  create  ;  Science  can  only  find. 

You  do  but  nibble  at  Truth  :  your  vaunted  lore 

Is  the  half-scornful  alms  flung  from  her  door. 

Your  lips  her  weak  and  watered  wine  have  known  ; 

The  un thinned  vintage  is  for  gods  alone. 

94 


A  CHANCE  MEETING 

I  met  a  poet, — peerless  among  those 
Who  make  their  lives  and  songs  one  perfect  pose. 
A  wise  man  too  !     For,  take  the  pose  away, 
What  else  were  left  'twould  pose  the  gods  to  say. 


95 


TO  A  CERTAIN   MINISTRY 

Statesmen,  arrayed  in  all  the  splendour 
Of  your  long  record  of  surrender, — 
If  one  false  god  there  yet  may  be 
To  whom  you  have  not  bowed  the  knee, 
Oh,  haste  to  yield  him  genuflexion  ! 
Fill  up  the  cup  of  your  abjection. 
In  that  brief  hour  ere  hence  ye  fleet, 
Make  your  ingloriousness  complete, 
Let  it  not  just  elude  perfection. 


96 


THE   RASH  POET 

A  poet  wrote  a  little  book,  and  rashly  called  it  a  play, 
And  some  were  wroth  with  the  little  book,  for  they 

said,  "  It  is  not  a  play  ; 
A  poem,  a  passable  poem  perhaps,  but  oh  dear,  not 

a  play  ; 
Not  anything  like  a  play  !  " 

A  lover  gave  his  lady  a  pearl,  and  somehow  called 

it  a  pebble, 
But  she  never  quarrelled  with  the  pearl  because  it 

was  not  a  pebble  ; 
She  never  cried,  "  A  passable  pearl,  but  oh  dear, 

not  a  pebble  ; 

Not  anything  like  a  pebble  !  " 
g  97 


ARTHUR    AT    TINTAGIL :    A    ROMAUNT 

Sir  Launcelot  he  was  lithe  and  agile, 
His  armour  fitted  him  wondrous  well ; 

And  he  spake  with  Arthur  at  Tintagil, — 
The  place  beside  the  new  hotel. 

"  Thy  knights,"  he  said,  "  are  stout  and  able  ; 

I  trow  their  swords  are  trusty  steel ; 
But  what  they  like  at  thy  Round  Table 

Is  a  square  meal." 

And  Queen  Guinevere  was  fair  and  fragile, 

And  loved  Sir  Launcelot  all  too  well ; 

And  she  tired  of  Arthur  and  Tintagil, 

Long  ere  they  built  the  new  hotel. 
98 


ARTHUR   AT   TINTAGIL:    A   ROMAUNT         99 
Fled  are  the  Shapes  of  rose-hued  fiction  : 

Vanished  are  Vivien,  Elaine,  Etarre  ! 
Gone  to  a  world  of  archaic  diction, 

Where  only  impossible  beings  are. 

Fled  is  the  Queen,  the  fair  and  fragile, 

Flown  with  the  Knight  she  loved  too  well ; 

But  the  sea  still  roars  beneath  Tintagil 
And  that  hotel. 


ULSTER'S   REWARD 

What  is  the  wage  the  faithful  earn  ? 
What  is  a  recompense  fair  and  meet  ? 
Trample  their  fealty  under  your  feet ; 
That  is  a  fitting  and  just  return. 
Flout  them,  buffet  them,  over  them  ride. 
Fling  them  aside. 

Ulster  is  ours  to  mock  and  spurn, 
Ours  to  spit  upon,  ours  to  deride  ; 
And  let  it  be  known  and  blazoned  wide 
That  this  is  the  wage  the  faithful  earn. 
Did  she  uphold  us  when  others  defied  ? 
Then  fling  her  aside. 

IOO 


ULSTER'S    REWARD  iot 

Oh,  when  has  constancy  firm  and  oeep' 
Been  proven  so  oft  yet  held  30  cheap  : 
She  had  only  asked  that  none  should  sever, 
None  should  divorce  us,  nothing  divide  ; 
She  had  only  asked  to  be  ours  for  ever, 
And  this  was  denied. 

This  was  the  prayer  of  the  heart  of  Ulster, 
To  them  that  repulsed  her 
And  flung  her  aside. 

When  in  the  world  was  such  payment  tendered 

For  service  rendered  ? 

Her  faith  had  been  tested,  her  love  had  been 

tried, 
And  all  that  she  begged  was  with  us  to  abide. 
She  proffered  devotion  in  boundless  store, 
But  that  is  a  thing  men  prize  no  more, 


102  ULSTER'S    REWARD 

And  tossing  jt  tyick  in  her  face  they  cried — 
"  Let  us.op<  n  the  door, 
And  fling  her  outside." 

Where  on  the  earth  was  the  like  of  it  done 

In  the  gaze  of  the  sun  ? 

She  had  pleaded  and  prayed  to  be  counted  still 

As  one  of  our  household  through  good  and  ill, 

And  with  scorn  they  replied  ; 

Jeered  at  her  loyalty,  trode  on  her  pride  ; 

Spurned  her,  repulsed  her, — 

Great-hearted  Ulster  ; 

Flung  her  aside. 


SONNETS 


TO  THEODORE   ROOSEVELT 

I  hear  a  mighty  people  asking  now 

Who    next    shall     be    their    captain    and    their 

chief. 
Amidst  them  towers  a  Man,  as  Teneriffe 
Towers  from  the  ocean,  and  that  Man  art  thou — 
Thou  of  the  shaggy  and  the  craggy  brow. 
The  day  of  fate  comes  on  ;  the  time  is  brief  ; 
Round  the  great  ship  is  many  a  lurking  reef ; 
And   wouldst    thou    drive   once   more   that   giant 

prow  ? 
Perhaps    thou    shalt     and    must  !       But    if    the 

choice 

Fall  on  another  voyager,  thou  shalt  still 
g  2  105 


io6  TO   THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

Be  what  thou  art,  thy  nation's  living  voice, 
Wherewith  she  speaks  in  thunder.    Nay,  thou  art 

more  ; 
Thou  art  her  fiery  pulse,  her  conquering  will ; 
Thou  art  America,  dauntless  Theodore. 

June  iS,  1 91 2. 


TILL  THAT  HOUR 

When  captive  Bonaparte  behind  him  threw 

The  chains  of   Elba,    and  flashed   on  earth  once 

more 
In  arms,  against  him  marched  a  host  that  bore 
The  lily  of  France  ;  and  baring  to  their  view 
His    bosom    he    cried,    "  Shoot !  " — but    no    man 

drew 
Trigger,  and  by  a  lone  lake's  wondering  shore 
They  knelt  in  awe  and  homage,  to  adore 
Him  they  were  sent  to  smite  and  bind  anew. 

Would  that  the  hour,  O  England,  were  at  hand, 

When  thou,  before  the  nations,  without  fear, 

107 


ioS  TILL  THAT   HOUR 

Mightst  in  thy  majesty  unguarded  stand, 
While  none  for  very  shame  should  dare  assail 
Thy  shieldless  breast  !  But  till  that  hour  draw  near, 
Thou  mayst  not  once  ungird  thy  cumbering  mail. 


TO  AN   AMERICAN   POET 

After  reading  his  "  Dirge  on  the  Violation  of  the  Panama  Treaty."  * 

Friend,  who  in  these  sad  numbers  dost  deplore 
A  faithless  deed  :  because  I  love  thy  land, 
That  gave  to  me  of  late  so  hearty  a  hand, 
In  thronged  Manhattan,  or  amid  the  roar 
Of  that  loud  city  on  Michigan's  still  shore, 
Therefore  do  I  rejoice  that  one  pure  band 

*  It  has  been  pointed  out  to  me  that  the  American  nation,  as 
distinct  from  its  Government,  is  overwhelmingly  against  the  policy 
here  commented  upon,  and  that  the  friend  to  whom  this  sonnet  is 
addressed  had  himself  emphasized  the  fact.  I  accept  the  correction 
gladly ;  but  the  Government  of  a  democratic  country  is  very  apt  to 
stand  for  the  country  in  the  eyes  of  the  outside  world,  and  if  I  have 
improperly  confused  the  two  I  submit  that  the  confusion  is  one  into 
which  the  foreigner,  in  the  particular  circumstances  of  the  case,  may 
pardonably  fall.  To  him,  at  the  present  time  (January,  1913),  the 
policy  referred  to  is  a  much  more  visible  fact  than  the  national 
repudiation  of  it. — W.  W. 

109 


no  TO   AN   AMERICAN    POET 

Keep  not  ignoble  silence,  but  withstand 

Ev'n  Her,  their  mother,  when  she  shuts  the  door 

In  Honour's  face.    So  Chatham,  whose  free  speech 

Yet  rings  through  Time — so  Wordsworth,   whose 

free  song 
Comes    blowing    from    his    mountains — dared    to 

impeach 
Their  England,  speaking  out  for  Man.   And  long 
May  Earth  breed  men  like  these,  who  scorned  to 

teach 
That  Power  can  shift   the  bounds  of   Right  and 

Wrong. 


TO  AN   ENGLISH   LIBERAL 

Who  accused  me  of  political  apostasy. 

When  reek  of  massacre  rilled  the  eastern  skies, 

Who  among  singers  sang  for  Man  but  me  ? 

These  lute-strings  were  a  scourge  to  tyranny 

When   you   turned   listless   from   those    anguished 

cries. 

A  hundred  times,  when  all  the  worldly-wise 

Kept  comfortable  silence,  I  spoke  free. 

And  would  you  now  begrudge  me  liberty 

To  use  my  own  brain,  see  with  my  own  eyes  ? 

When  yon  hung  rearward,  I  was  in  the  van, 

Among  the  whizzing  arrows  ;  and  to-day, 

in 


112  TO   AN    ENGLISH    LIBERAL 

Because  in  one  thing  I  reshape  my  creed, 
You  cry  "  Apostate  !  " — Liberalism  indeed  ! 
Give  me  the  Liberalism  that  guards  for  Man 
His  right  to  think  his  thought  and  say  his  say. 


TO  MISS  CLARA  B.  SPENCE 
OF  NEW  YORK 

[A  greeting  from  William  Watson  and  Maureen,  his  wife.] 

Lady,  whose  task  or  joy  it  is  to  guide 

By  fragrant  pathways,  toward  noble  goals 

Of  womanhood,  so  many  vernal  souls, 

Clad  in  the  glory  of  their  morningtide  ; — 

Across  that  Sea,  the  Great  Unsatisfied, 

That  took  the  cruellest  of  its  cruel  tolls 

But  yesterday,  and  now  exulting  rolls 

Above  the  fallen  turrets  of  Man's  pride, 

Receive  our  salutation,  you  that  choose 

The  life  laborious,  crowned  with  fruitful  deed  ; 

113 


ii4  TO    MISS    CLARA    B.    SPENCE 

And  us  forgive,  who  oft  so  lightly  heed 
What  hours  inestimable  we  richly  lose, 
In  this  old  garden  and  orchard,  or  some  mead 
Lulled  by  the  drone  of  the  meandering  Ouse. 


THE   REAL   REFORMER 

Not  he,  the  statesman,  whatsoe'er  his  name, 
Who  would  strip  Life  of  all  adventurousness, 
Of  all  but  arrow-proof  and  storm-proof  dress, 
Making  it  more  and  more  ignobly  tame, 
Poorer  in  perils  which  they  that  overcame 
Were  braced  and  manned  by, — making  it  less  and 

less 
The    school    of    heroes    armed    for    struggle    and 

stress, — 

Not  he  shall  win  hereafter  radiant  fame. 

But  when  some  dauntless  teller  of  truth  unsweet 

Shall    shake    the    slumberous    People,    with    rude 

power, 

»5 


n6  THE   REAL   REFORMER 

To  a  vast  New  Birth  of  all  the  soul  and  mind, 

Him,  and  none  other,  at  the  destined  hour, 

Him,  quick  or  dead,  the  thunderous  thanks  shall 

greet, 
Not  of  his  country  alone,  but  of  his  kind. 


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NEW    POEMS 

Crown  8vo.  Second  edition.  Price  5/- 
net.  Also  an  edition  printed  on  Japanese 
Vellum.      Price  21/-  net. 


fig 


SABLE    AND    PURPLE 

Crown  8vo.     Price  2/6  net. 

HERALDS   OF    THE  DAWN 

A  Play  in  Eight  Scenes 
Small  Quarto.     Price  4/6  net. 


HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


POEMS  TO  PAVLOVA 

By  A.  TULLOCH  CULL.  With  8 
Full-page  Illustrations  of  Madame  Pavlova 
in  her  Most  Famous  Dances.  Large  8vo. 
Price  3/6  net.      Inland  Postage  4d.  extra. 

THE     FLUTE     OF 
SARDONYX 

Poems  by  EDMUND  JOHN.  With  an 
Introduction  by  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS. 
Crown  8 vo.  Price  3/6  net.  Inland  Postage 
4d.  extra. 

DAYS    OF    A    YEAR 

By  M.  D.  ASHLEY  DODD.  With 
an  Appreciation  by  HENRY  JAMES. 
Small  8vo.  Price  2/6  net.  Bound  in 
Velvet  Calf,  price  5/-  net.  Inland  Postage 
4d.  extra. 

HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


THE  WINDHAM  PAPERS 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 
THE  EARL  OF  ROSEBERY,  K.G. 
Two  volumes.     34  Portraits.     32/-  net. 


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fl 


The  hitherto  unpublished  private  corre- 
spondence of  a  man  who  was  both  a  Political 
and  Social  Leader  of  his  time.  There  are 
letters  from  George  III,  the  Dukes  of  York 
and  Gloucester,  Pitt,  Fox,  Burke,  Canning, 
Dr.  Johnson,  Cobbett,  Malone,  Lords 
Nelson,  Grenville,  Minto,  Spencer,  and  a 
score  of  other  notable  men  (and  women) 
of  the  day. 

The  Press  is  unanimous  in  pronouncing 
"The  Windham  Papers"  an  important 
contribution  to  the  Social  and  Political 
History  of  the  times.  "  The  finest  English 
gentleman  of  his  and  perhaps  of  all  time  " 
is  Lord  Rosebery's  verdict  upon  "the 
chivalrous  high-souled  Windham." 


HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


THE  BACONIAN  HERESY 

A  Confutation  by  J.  M.  ROBERTSON, 
M.P.  Demy  8vo  (9  by  5f  inches).  Price 
21/-  net.      Inland  Postage  6d.  extra. 

HP  HE  belief  that  "Bacon  wrote  Shakespeare  "  has  now 
had  currency  in  divers  forms  for  over  half  a  century. 
In  addition  to  the  positive  doctrine,  there  is  a  negative 
one,  to  the  effect  that  the  Plays  and  Poems  must  have 
been  the  work  of  a  lawyer  and  a  classical  scholar, 
unknown,  and  cannot  have  been  written  by  the  "  Strat- 
ford actor."  Mr.  Robertson  has  long  been  content  to 
dismiss  the  notion  with  a  passing  allusion  or  an  in- 
cidental confutation.  On  the  announcement,  however, 
that  Mark  Twain  had  died  a  "  Baconian  "  he  was  moved 
to  undertake  a  systematic  study  and  refutation  of  the 
Baconian  case.  He  has  attempted  to  deal  with  all  the 
main  aspects  of  the  dispute — the  "  lawyer "  theory,  the 
"classical  scholar"  thesis,  and  the  argument  from  co- 
incidences of  phrase  in  Bacon  and  Shakespeare.  He 
shows  that  there  is  much  more  "legalism"  in  other 
Elizabethan  dramatists  than  in  Shakespeare ;  that  the 
author  was  not  a  classical  scholar  ;  and  that  the  alleged 
"  echoes  and  coincidences  "  are  merely  such  as  occurred 
everywhere  in  Elizabethan  literature. 


HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


WILLIAM  MORRIS 

Poet — Craftsman — Social   Reformer 
A    Study  in    Personality  by   ARTHUR 
COMPTON-RICKETT,    M.A.,    LL.D. 
Illustrated.      Demy  8vo  (9  by  5f  inches). 
Price  7/6  net.      Inland  Postage  6d.  extra. 

THIS  book  is  primarily  a  study  of  Morris 
the  man,  and  contains  a  number  of  fresh 
stories,  unpublished  letters,  and  personalia  con- 
cerning the  poet-craftsman,  which  throw  new 
light  upon  his  character,  and  illustrate  vividly 
his  idiosyncrasies  of  temperament.  The  various 
manifestations  of  Morris's  artistic  activities  are 
made  the  subject  of  detailed  criticism,  and  in 
each  case  the  personal  equation  is  especially 
emphasised.  In  compiling  this  work  the  author 
has  had  the  assistance  of  many  who  knew 
Morris  well,  including  Sir  Philip  Burne-Jones, 
Sir  William  Blake  Richmond,  the  Rt.  Hon. 
John  Burns,  M.P.,  and  Messrs.  Belfort  Bax,  S.  C. 
Cockerell,  Walter  Crane,  R.  B.  Cunninghame 
Graham,  A.  Egmont  Hake,  Emery  Walker, 
Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  and  Mrs.  Gilmore, 
Morris's  sister,  etc. 

HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH 
AND  HIS  FRIENDS 

By  VIOLETTE  M.  MONTAGU.  With 
a  Photogravure  Frontispiece  and  16  other 
Illustrations.  Demy  8vo  (9  by  5f  inches). 
Price  12/6  net.      Inland  Postage  6d.  extra. 

FEW  students  of  the  French  Revolution 
know  by  what  strange  fate  the  Abbe 
Edgeworth  came  to  stand  by  side  of  Louis  XVI 
on  the  Place  de  la  Revolution  on  a  cold,  foggy 
morning  in  January,  1793.  Forced  in  his 
childhood  to  leave  his  native  Ireland,  on  account 
of  his  parents'  change  of  religion,  the  Abbe  went 
to  France,  where  his  talents  as  a  preacher,  his 
tact,  his  polished  manners  and  his  inexhaustible 
love  for  his  fellow-creatures,  caused  him  to  be 
chosen  as  father-confessor  to  Madame  Elizabeth, 
the  King's  sister.  He  accompanied  the  King  on 
that  last  terrible  procession  through  the  streets 
of  Paris,  after  which  he  escaped  to  Normandy, 
where  he  lived  for  nearly  three  years  an  outlaw, 
with  a  price  upon  his  head.  Having  reached 
England,  he,  at  the  request  of  Louis  XVIII, 
left  his  family  and  went  into  exile  for  the  second 
time. 


HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


A  GREAT  COQUETTE 

Madame  Recamier  and  Her  Salon 

By  JOSEPH  TURQUAN.  Author  of 
"  The  Love  Affairs  of  Napoleon."  With  a 
Photogravure  Frontispiece  and  16  other 
Illustrations.  Demy  8vo  (9  by  5f  inches). 
Price  12/6  net.     Postage  6d.  extra. 

MADAME  RECAMIER  possessed  a 
wonderful  gift  of  attracting  and  encour- 
aging genius.  Her  marriage  was  an  enigma, 
enveloped  in  clouds  of  venomous  gossip.  Her 
attitude  towards  her  husband  remains  a  puzzle. 
The  happiness  of  her  earlier  years  was  oppressed 
by  the  social  earthquake  of  the  first  Revolution, 
and  the  troubled  years  of  the  Consulate  and  the 
Empire.  Madame  Recamier's  salon  became 
celebrated  throughout  Europe,  because  every 
great  man  who  crossed  its  portals  grew  to  be  a 
faithful  worshipper  of  its  mistress.  The  beautiful 
woman  who  attracted  the  affection  of  Chateau- 
briand and  Ampere  was  something  more  than 
a  coquette.  Her  friendship  was  based  upon  the 
rarest  of  gifts — unselfish  sympathy.  M.  Turquan 
throws  much  fresh  light  upon  a  curious  problem 
of  human  relationships.  He  has  discovered 
material  which  gives  an  additional  value  to  his 
skill  as  a  writer. 

HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


LEONARDO  DA  VINCI 

The  Florentine  Years  of  Leonardo 
and  Verrocchio 

By  Dr.  JENS  THUS.  With  upwards 
of  300  Illustrations,  reproduced  in  tints 
and  black  and  white.  Large  41:0.  Price 
42/-  net.      Inland  Postage  1/-  extra. 

IT  was  not  until  recently  that  the  manuscripts 
of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  became  an  object  of 
research  and  study.  Slowly  the  mass  of  ascrip- 
tions has  been  whittled  down,  and  picture  after 
picture  attributed  to  the  master  has  been  proved 
to  be  spurious.  In  the  Uffizi  Gallery,  for  in- 
stance, of  42  drawings  bearing  Leonardo's  name 
Dr.  Thiis  finds  only  seven  genuine.  Dr.  Thiis 
has  devoted  many  years  to  the  study  of  the  work 
of  the  artist,  his  master,  Verrocchio,  and  his 
contemporaries,  with  the  result  that  he  writes  of 
the  Florentine  Period  with  the  authority  of 
thorough  knowledge.  He  has  enriched  his  text 
with  upwards  of  300  reproductions,  a  large 
number  of  them  being  reproduced  in  double 
tints  so  as  more  nearly  to  resemble  the  originals. 

HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.W. 


FRANCISCO   GOYA 

A  Study  in  the  Work  and  Personality 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century  Spanish 
Painter  and  Satirist. 

By  HUGH  STOKES.  With  48  Full- 
page  Illustrations.  Small  Quarto.  Price 
10/6  net.     Postage  6d.  extra. 

NOT  until  some  fifty  years  ago  was  it  recognised 
that  during  the  convulsions  of  the  Peninsular 
War  a  Spanish  artist  was  busy  continuing  the 
glorious  traditions  of  the  national  art.  Until  Gautier 
and  Yriarte  wrote  about  Goya  his  name  was  practi- 
cally unknown  in  France  and  England.  His  position 
is  now  assured,  and  he  ranks  with  the  great  masters 
of  modern  painting.  As  a  satirist  he  may  be  termed 
the  Spanish  Hogarth  ;  his  portraits  recall  the  best 
period  of  the  eighteenth  century,  whilst  in  his  designs 
for  tapestry  he  frankly  emulates  the  light  grace  of 
the  French  craftsmen.  Yet  he  could  treat  sterner 
subjects  in  a  severer  style.  His  large  canvases 
dealing  in  a  realistic  and  dreadful  fashion  with  the 
horrors  of  the  French  war  prove  that  he  was  artis- 
tically the  precursor  of  Manet.  His  etchings  are 
superb. 


HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


CARAVANNING    AND 
CAMPING-OUT 

Experiences  and  Adventures  in  a  Living- 
Van  and  in  the  open  air.  With  Hints  and 
Facts  for  Would-be  Caravanners. 
By  J.  HARRIS  STONE,  M. A.,  Secretary 
of  the  Caravan  Club  of  Great  Britain. 
With  nearly  80  Plans  and  Diagrams.  Small 
Quarto.  Price  15/-  net.  Inland  Postage 
6d.  extra. 

MR.  STONE,  writer  of  "  Caravan  Notes  "  for 
The  Times,  is  a  practical  caravanner,  who 
knows  nearly  every  caravan  upon  the  roads.  He  is 
the  recipient  of  hundreds  of  letters  asking  for  advice 
on  a  thousand  subjects  dealing  with  his  hobby,  and 
has  written  this  exhaustive  book,  which  should  leave 
the  would-be  caravanner  without  another  question  in 
his  mind.  This  is  a  volume  that  can  be  read  over 
the  camp-fire,  telling  of  literary  vagabonds,  of  roadside 
adventures,  to  be  read  for  its  own  sake  as  well  as  for 
the  information  it  contains.  Much  advice  is  given 
about  cooking,  pitches,  the  law  of  the  road,  the  care 
of  horses,  and  motor  caravans,  which  to  the  horse 
caravans  are  what  the  liner  is  to  the  old  tea-clipper. 
In  short,  the  whole  subject  of  caravanning  and  camp- 
ing-out is  dealt  with  in  a  thorough  and  exhaustive 
manner. 

HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


WILD  BIRDS 
THROUGH  THE  YEAR 

By  GEORGE  A.  B.  DEWAR,  Author 
of  "  The  Birds  in  Our  Wood,"  etc.  With 
1 6  Illustrations.  Demy  8vo  (9  by  5f 
inches).  Price  5/-  net.  Inland  Postage 
5d.  extra. 

AFTER  studying  bird  life  in  the  Alps,  the  Apen- 
JTx.  nines,  Sicily,  and  Algeria,  among  other  places, 
Mr.  Dewar  has  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  there 
are  no  birds  like  British  birds ;  and  in  order  that 
others  may  share  his  knowledge  he  has  written 
"  Wild  Birds  through  the  Year."  He  has  commenced 
his  year  "when  never-ending  Spring  leads  Summer 
on."  In  response  to  a  reminder  that  the  year  begins 
on  January  1st,  amid  the  dying  echoes  of  "Auld 
Lang  Syne,"  he  replied  that  his  Bird  Year  began 
with  the  most  beautiful  of  all  months — magic  May. 
The  birds  he  presents  include  almost  every  one 
familiar  in  Great  Britain.  They  appear  in  their 
natural  setting  of  coppice,  spinney,  or  common,  in- 
wrought with  that  exquisite  pattern  of  wild  flowers 
and  butterflies  from  which  they  are  in  nature  in- 
separable. Of  Mr.  Dewar's  last  bird  book  Dean 
Hole  wrote :  "  It  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  books 
I  have  ever  read." 

HERBERT  JENKINS,  LTD.,  ARUNDEL  PLACE,  S.  W. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY, 
BERKELEY 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 

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expiration  of  loan  period. 


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